With the 2024 Olympics complete and our article regarding the 2028 Olympics overlapping with the 2028 eclipse, it got us thinking about eclipses and the modern Olympics. The modern Olympics started in 1896, so there have been Y summer games and X winter games.

There is not a guarantee to have a specific number of solar and lunar eclipses every year, nor are they guaranteed to be seen in any specific places, nor at specific times of year. As according to NASA, there are up to 7 eclipses in a given year, of both the solar and lunar varieties.

Although there are some instances of lunar eclipses occurring at night, there haven’t been any Olympics in which it was deliberately occurring during an eclipse. That said, there are a plethora of opportunities for the Olympics to intersect with an eclipse. The best opportunity would be with a solar eclipse, which occurs during the day.

The good news is that there is plenty of time to schedule this, but the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate that in 1.5 inches per years. What this means is that there will be a time in which there won’t be any more total solar eclipses. However, that wont be for several hundred million or 1.5 billion years, which means that as long as there are people, there will be a plethora of time to have eclipses and the Olympics overlap.

Although 2024 was the best opportunity for a while, there will be others and realize that the potential for a solar eclipse during the olympics would be a massive event for PR and such.

Now you know more about the astronomy events that can occur during an Olympics! Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and make sure to check out other articles this for more amazing content like this.