An interactive globe letting readers trace eclipse paths through 2080 and check which future eclipses they might personally witness — scientific data made personal.
Ahead of the 2017 total solar eclipse that crossed the continental United States, the Washington Post’s graphics team built an interactive piece to help ordinary readers — not just astronomers — understand exactly when and where they would be able to see it.
An interactive map and globe traced the narrow path of totality across the country for the 2017 event, then layered in the paths of every subsequent total eclipse through 2080. Readers could enter their location, or even their age, and see which future eclipses might fall within their lifetime and reach — turning an abstract orbital-mechanics dataset into a personally relevant answer.
The piece is widely cited as an example of personalised data journalism: rather than presenting a dataset and letting the reader do the work of finding themselves in it, the visualization does that work for them.
It reflects a principle Vis Lab applies in its own digital twin and monitoring interfaces — abstract sensor or simulation data becomes meaningful the moment someone can see their own asset, site or decision reflected in it.
Featured in Vis Lab's overview of landmark visualizations that shaped the field.
