Make it look like you are working… From Time and Date, how much eclipse you can see from where you live and the date of the next eclipse (moon).
Here’s a compendium of historical eclipse information from LiveScience, including:
One of the greatest eclipse observers in history was the Persian scholar Ibn al-Haytham, also known by the Latinized version of his name, Alhazen.
Born in Basra, in what in now Iraq, Al-Haytham spent most of his life in the Egyptian city of Cairo during the Fatimid Caliphate in the 11th century A.D.
His great invention was named “Al-Bayt al-Muthlim” in Arabic (which translates to “the dark room” in English) — the earliest known “camera obscura,” where a bright external image, such as the sun, is projected through a hole in the wall of a darkened room.
The camera obscura would go on to become an important tool for later astronomers, and — in a miniaturized, portable form — it was ultimately developed into the modern photographic “camera.”
and trivia:
Solar eclipses also feature in one of the earliest science fiction stories, the “Somnium,” (or “The Dream”) written by the German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler and published in 1634. More.
Who knew Kepler wrote science fiction?
The eclipse is really big in Casper, Wyoming, in fact, it is totally big.
Eclipse live from NASA
See also: The eclipse scene in The Privileged Planet; why eclipses provide valuable information for science: