Early evening is a time when many of us turn our gaze upon April’s night skies, but in fact all hours of the month’s days and nights are fair game for the ever-inquisitive skywatcher.

Without a doubt you’ve heard that the solar eclipse, the so-called “Great North American Eclipse,” is upcoming April 8. As with all things exaggerated, this event may bring a shade of disappointment. Totality, a long strip of the moon’s shadow just 123 miles wide, will be far away, leaving Colorado with a diminished percentage of the partial eclipse the further away from it one goes.

It’s true that the odds of witnessing totality at any given place in your lifetime, e.g. your house, are low, as in once-in-375 years low. This time around, partial is what we get, and skywatchers know how to make the best of it.

With expectations now brought down to earth, this solar eclipse will still be exciting, weather permitting. Skywatchers in Longmont and Boulder should be able to see about 70.4% of the solar disk covered by the moon at its maximum. Just as a lunar eclipse always occurs on a full moon, so does a solar eclipse occur on a new moon, incidentally the only time that a new moon is visible.

If you haven’t already prepared to travel to areas of totality, everything beyond getting the glasses is pretty much too late. CU’s Prof. Emeritus of astronomy Doug Duncan said that his “Totality over Texas” trip is “all full, with waiting list.” Accommodations up and down the length of totality are either sold out entirely or outrageously expensive.

First contact is technically at 11:28 a.m. when the edge (limb) of the moon, coming in from the right, touches the edge of the sun, but you’ll actually see the moon’s encroachment at 11:30 a.m. The sun will be about 20% covered by 11:52 a.m., and around noon you’ll notice a drop in air temperature. Note the sharpening of shadows at 12:09 p.m. and the sky noticeably darker at 12:19 p.m.

The maximum and the deepest point of the eclipse is 12:40 p.m., when the sun is most covered for Boulder and Weld counties. From then on, the moon slowly slides from the sun as it travels left and up until 1:54 p.m. when the two celestial objects’ limbs separate and the partial eclipse ends.

The whole event lasts 2 hours 25 minutes.

You’ll need proper eclipse glasses like the two-for-$5 sold at Fiske Planetarium on CU’s Boulder campus. Definitely no naked eye viewing nor sunglasses. Without industry-grade filters, binoculars or telescopes can give you painful and permanent blindness. Attempting the paper-hole projection technique is the last-ditch and usually disappointing effort, but craft it if you’re in a pinch. For directions visit bellinghampubliclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Make-a-pinhole.pdf.

The solar eclipse’s shadow first appears in eastern Kiribati and north of the Cook Islands in Micronesia, makes “landfall” near Mazatlán, Mexico, passes through 13 states before crossing into eastern Canada. After the shadow jets off Newfoundland and Labrador, it heads out to sea before ending off the coast of Europe.

The moon’s shadow enters Mexico at 1,562 mph while gradually picking up speed. By the time it departs Canada, it’s traveling almost 5,300 mph.

The next total solar eclipse visible in Boulder and Weld counties will be Aug. 12, 2045.

The moon is full 5:51 p.m. April 23 and is called the Full Pink Moon, a reference to the blooms of creeping ground phlox.