(NEXSTAR) – A long swath of the United States was in for a treat Monday, as a rare total solar eclipse passed over the country. Even those outside the path of totality were set to get a good view of a partial eclipse throughout the day.
If you want to know when to look to the sky Monday – with proper safety glasses, of course – NASA created a tool that allows you to search for the optimal viewing time by your ZIP code.
To see when the view will be best in your location, enter your ZIP code into the embedded search box below and hit enter. A countdown to the peak viewing time will appear, as will predicted weather conditions.
You can also open the NASA tool in a new tab here.
Millions of spectators along the totality corridor stretching from Mexico to the U.S. to Canada eagerly awaited Monday’s celestial sensation even as forecasters called for clouds.
During Monday’s full eclipse, the moon slips right in front of the sun, entirely blocking it. The resulting twilight, with only the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona visible, would be long enough for birds and other animals to fall silent, and for planets, stars and maybe even a comet to pop out.
The out-of-sync darkness lasts up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds. That’s almost twice as long as it was during the U.S. coast-to-coast eclipse seven years ago because the moon is closer to Earth. It will be another 21 years before the U.S. sees another total solar eclipse on this scale.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.