2024 Total Eclipse Poster – Tyler Nordgren

In “The Sun and Moon Align with You” poster for NASA, Nordgren – who is a professional astronomer as well as an artist – said that his goal was to capture the experience that can be had by millions of people in cities across the United States in April, while reflecting on the last total solar eclipse that crossed the country in August 2017.

“For 2017, the total solar eclipse passed over so many national parks and natural landscapes with very few cities in the path. So I created a poster modeled after the 1930s ‘See America’ national parks posters produced by the Works Progress Administration to educate Americans about the parks. I figured I was doing the same thing. Now, seven years later in 2024, this time the total solar eclipse is passing over major metropolitan areas. Over 30 million people will be living directly in the path of totality – that's almost three times the total in 2017. So I wanted to make a poster that emphasized what it would be like to see it in one of these cities.

“The poster shows a figure standing before a representative skyline where I used elements of different cities (like certain buildings and bridges) all across the path of totality. Along the underpass that sweeps overhead of our central figure are the names of major cities from every state along totality. It truly is stunning how many people in so many cities will get to see this. 

“Think about being in a sports or concert stadium when the crowd erupts in joy all at once. Now imagine, not just a stadium, but every single person in an entire city all at once at the instant the Sun goes black. This will be a day people will remember and talk about with awe for the rest of their lives. I hope I captured some small part of that.”