of the 2015 edition - even the cheaper cruise version which involved bobbing around off the coast of the Faroes. From my experience of the wintry fragments of land scattered between Shetland and the Arctic, not seeing the sun is reasonably easy to achieve at any time of year: the northern sky often seems to buckle under the weight of heavy cloud, as it did for the majority of the UK today.

People gather in front of a planetarium in Berlin to catch a glimpse of a solar eclipse

Read more

Twenty years ago it was a different story. I watched the light go out amid the ancient Moghul ruins of Fatehpur Sikri near Jaipur in India. My notes of the event read:

“As the heavens reveal their winning hand and darknessof totality. While the pebbly beach was hardly the stuff of travel dreams, the seafood restaurant was heavenly. But the gods did not smile upon us, and the event was obscured by clouds – much like today's.

A partial eclipse seen in USA as the sun sets in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

After today, my astronomical sights are fixed exactly 29 months ahead, to the greatest eclipse of your lifetime and mine. The prospect of losing the sun to a cosmological void for a couple of minutes will grip the US and attract millions of tourists. I hope I shall see you on the dark side, too.

On 21 August 2017 - peak holiday season - the first total eclipse to appear in the contiguous United States since a brief