LOS ANGELES — For the first time in 99 years, a total eclipse of the sun will span the entire United States crossing from the West Coast to the East Coast on Monday. The event will be turning day into night for just a little more than two minutes.
The phenomenon is basically the moon’s orbit taking it in front of the sun to create the blackout. It will be a fun experience for those who have taken the right precautions to view the event. But the scientific community is going crazy about what this means as far as research is concerned.
What the eclipse means in terms of research will be covered extensively by the Science Channel through their two days of coverage, “Great American Eclipse,” starting on Sunday with a pre-eclipse special. On the day of darkness, the cable channel will broadcast live from Madras, Ore., the first place in the United States to see the eclipse featuring scientists from the Lowell Observatory. Coverage ends that night with a post-eclipse show hosted by Mike Massimino that will feature the most compelling science information and images from the ground and in the air.
The question is what can be so compelling about daytime darkness other than the oddity of it?
Angela Des Jardins, director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium and leader of the Eclipse Ballooning Project, is leading a team that will launch 100 high-altitude balloons from across the eclipse’s path, sending live video images to NASA. She says there’s a lot of interesting things scientists can observe and monitor only during a total eclipse.
“The sun is just so bright that there are things we cannot see except for when the light is mostly blocked out for us,” Des Jardins says. “There’s really interesting atmospheric science that can happen. By actually using this crazy coincidence of this dark shadow coming across the Earth in the daytime, it sets up all kinds of temperature changes and gravity waves, and learning about that and studying it in detail can actually teach us about our atmosphere better in general.”
Corona in focus
Amir Caspi, senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and the principal investigator for the NASA WB 57 Eclipse Project that will be observing the eclipse from two high-speed fighter jets, adds that when the solar disk is blocked out, you can actually see the solar corona. Scientists will be able to do more research into what makes the corona so hot. The corona is millions of degrees whereas the visible surface is typically a few thousand degrees.
The second thing he and his team will be studying is why the corona is so well structured.
“When you look at pictures of the corona from past eclipses or if you look at ultraviolet images that are taken from various satellites, you can see that there are these well-formed loops and arcades and fans,” Caspi says. “Those things stay relatively stable, and they stay relatively smooth. They look like they were freshly combed and not snarled and matted.
“So we are trying to figure out why that is because when people try to understand the physics of the magnetic structures in the corona, our current understanding of that modeling says that they should tangle up and become this matted mess, and that’s not what happens. So the corona is constantly releasing little bits of twists and complexity, and we are trying to find out why.”
Take precautions
Observations will help scientists in their research in understanding galaxy formation and quantifying the number of black holes in our galaxy. Those who don’t wear lab coats to make a living will just be able to view this rare event just for fun. Actually, the main reason this is a rare event is that it will be passing across the entire United States. There is actually a total eclipse of the sun approximately every 18 months, but the majority of those happen over water.
Where you live will determine how much of an eclipse you will see. There’s a path of totality about 70 miles wide that starts at the coast of Oregon and goes through the coast of South Carolina. The entire trek will take about 90 minutes. The more miles you live away from this path the less amount of eclipse that will be visible.
Whether directly in the path or so far away that it only appears as a slight darkening, watching an eclipse isn’t dangerous if the correct precautions are taken. Des Jardins says the danger is looking at the sun without proper protection.
“When you do want to look at it, you have to have special protective solar glasses which are readily available or have some kind of method of projecting the eclipse on the ground, which you can do,” Des Jardins says. “That being said, there is one caveat. During totality, so if you are in the path of totality and the moon is completely blocking the sun, that is when you want to look, take your glasses off and look and enjoy the spectacle.”
This is where your eyes still can be damaged despite the fact the sun is total eclipse.
Scientist urge everyone to safely observe the event because such chances don’t come along all the time. James Bullock, chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of California at Irvine, is excited a whole new generation of people — especially young people — are getting the opportunity to see a total eclipse.
“It’s pretty awe-inspiring to stand in the shadow of the moon. It’s spectacular. You can actually see the sun’s corona with your eye. So we have the chance perhaps for a whole generation of kids to be inspired by this physical, astronomical event that is not necessarily happening in a video game, but that is happening in the real world around them,” Bullock says. “And you viscerally experience the fact that the Earth is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, the moon is orbiting at a couple thousand miles an hour around the Earth, the shadow is moving faster than a thousand miles an hour across the continent.
“So just the sort of visceral reality of that event, you can imagine inspiring kids to go into the science fields or engineering just from experiencing it. It’s happened in the past. We know that there are a lot of famous scientists and engineers and inventors that were inspired by experiencing events like this, and I think that’s having a show like the one we are talking about now will reach even more kids, and it could be a really important event.”
One thing the scientists want to stress is that a total eclipse of the sun is a natural event that has been going on for millions of years. There are a lot of urban tales and myths connected to the event but the scientists stress an eclipse doesn’t have any special meaning outside what scientific knowledge that can be obtained.
In other words, they guarantee no apocalypse on Aug. 21.
