Kelly Beatty, world renowned “eclipse chaser” and Chelmsford resident, brings us this compelling presentation about celestial events. Presented via Zoom by Chelmsford Public Library on Janaury 18, 2024.
My name is Gian I’m one of the reference Librarians here at the chumford public library um and thank you so much for joining us tonight for future solar eclipses um on April 8th 2024 the moon’s Dark Shadow will cross the continental US for the second time in seven years
This total solar eclipse promises to be among the most most widely observed in history it’s already widely anticipated as many hotels within the path of totality sold out in two years in advance and another solar eclipse this one an annular ring Eclipse served as a warm-up act when it crossed the Western
Us in October 2023 this presentation will provide an overview of the nature of solar eclipses helpful advice for seeing April’s events successfully and a preview of solar eclipse is worth seeing through 2028 so I’m just going to do a quick intro of our speaker tonight we have Jay Kelly
Bey who has been explaining the science and wonder of astronomy to the public since 1974 when he joined the staff of sky and Telescope an award-winning writer and Communicator he specializes in planetary science and space exploration you’ll occasionally hears interviews on the Weather Channel and NPR during the 1980s he was among the
First Western journalists to gain firsthand access to the Soviet space program which was super super cool so without further Ado I’m going to pass it over to Jay Kelly thank you very much GI and welcome everybody wow what a great turnout and it’s a it’s my pleasure to be here with
All of you uh this is an an area that is near and dear to my heart I am what you call an eclipse Chaser I have seen 15 total solar eclipses and about seven or eight annular eclipses ring eclipses which we’ll get into in a second so um I
I have a real love for these things and we are going to have so much fun tonight so without further Ado I’m going to share my screen here and we will get started I need to share sound and yes we will then we’re going to start the
Slideshow always do it this way because okay great so we’re going to cover all kinds of things how eclipses happen uh what’s special about them what to look for how to view them safely how to take pictures of them and we’ll finish up with a
Little of what’s coming up in the in the future after this one coming up in April but I have to say there is there are few things in nature maybe if an a volcano erupted you know in Southern New Hampshire or something like that it would be exciting but there are a few
Things in nature certainly celestially more exciting unique and and just mind-blowingly amazing than total eclipses of the Sun and as the intro said we’re we’re about to have the second one that we’ve had here in the Continental contiguous us uh in the last seven years and the reason it’s so
Amazing is that what you’re seeing here is a picture of a totally Eclipse sun and I have to say pictures do not do justice to what you can see with your eyeballs so imagine it’s an ordinary day and something happens you look up in the sky and there’s a Black Bullet Hole
Where the sun used to be and around it is this sort of electric white wreath of streamers coming out this is the sun’s atmosphere of the Corona and then all around you uh it’s gotten dark kind of dark Twilight dark and uh the the temperature drops and and animals go to
Roost and it’s just the kind of experience that you cannot imagine before you actually experience it so I’m going to get you ready for that first a little background here you know the moon’s orbit is inclined or tipped with respect to Earth’s orbit around the sun by five degrees and that doesn’t seem
Like much but what it means is that um we don’t get eclipses every month otherwise at every full moon and every new moon we’d have an eclipse and and then they’d be boring and you wouldn’t have me speaking tonight but instead that alignment of the Sun and the Earth
And the moon um uh can happen on opposite sides of our orbit six months apart and um and there has to be a new moon or a full moon at that at that moment in time in order to get an eclipse so I just want to talk briefly a
Little bit about lunar eclipses you know the Earth casts a big Shadow and so when the moon travels through it around going around its orbit anybody who’s on the ni side of the Earth can see that eclipse of the moon and you know the funny thing is that if Earth didn’t have an
Atmosphere when these eclipses happen the moon would just go black but it doesn’t it takes on this really weird Eerie coppery or slightly reddish color you’ll sometimes hear these called blood moons because of the color and what’s happening is that sunlight is is kind of squeaking around the edge of the Earth
Being refracted into this Shadow cone which is called the Umbra um and because it’s around the edge of the Earth the the light is colored like sunset colors reddish and that gives the moon this reddish Hue there’s also a kind of a partial Shadow called the penumbra but
In any case we can see these lunar eclipses wherever we are on the back side of the Earth on the dark side of the earth here and here’s an example of of what our magazine my magazine sky and Telescope used to do to predict the
Umbra is the dark inner part and the pen umra is the sort of shadowy outer part of Earth’s Shadow and when the moon goes through it you know it turns dark I picked this one December of 2011 because here is a timelapse photo of that same eclipse and you can see very distinctly
The the round shape of Earth’s shadow in fact it was this Shadow during eclipses that convinced the ancient Greeks that Earth really was round uh and not flat so here are some upcoming lunar eclipses this year is going to be pretty boring uh uh nothing nothing special to
Talk about uh starting next year we’re going to have a three a run of three total lunar eclipses in a row two of which will be visible from here in North America so that’s something to look forward to but we’re not here to talk about lunar eclipses tonight nope we are
Here to talk about Solar Idiots oh hey I heard there’s a lunar eclipse tonight maybe we should look up nah for me it’s solar or nothing solar or nothing is the Mantra of the night so we get a a we get a lunar eclipse when it’s a full moon and
We get a solar eclipse when the it’s new moon when the moon is between us and the sun now the moon’s a lot smaller so it casts a smaller Shadow and you can see by this diagram then rather than instead of covering the whole earth it only
Covers a really small spot on the daylit side and we can actually see this from space this is a photo taken from space of an eclipse of the sun total eclipse that happened in 1990 uh 1998 I’m sorry 99 uh this is over Europe and you can’t tell it’s Europe because
It was cloudy that day over all of Europe and so nobody got to see the eclipse and this is an interesting thing about solar eclipses it doesn’t matter if it’s cloudy or not they still happen it still gets dark uh here’s another one a little bit more recently taken from a
Meteorological satellite and you can see that dark spot you know tracing across the surface of the Earth and in unlike like a lunar eclipse if you want to see totality you literally have to be where that spot is passing over you have to be in the right place at the right time now
There’s an interesting thing about the moon it’s not in a circular orbit quite around the earth its orbit sometimes brings it a little closer sometimes farther away and you know amazingly the sun is 400 times bigger than the earth but it’s also uh I’m sorry 400 times
Bigger than the moon but it’s also 4 times farther away and so what that means is that in the sky the Sun and the Moon have almost exactly the same apparent size it’s about the size of your pinky finger your pinky fingernail held up at Arms leg that’s about how big
It is and so consequently the Moon is just big enough to cover the whole Sun but only when it’s at the point in its orbit where it’s closest to Earth when it’s a little bit farther away and we’re only talking a few percent here remarkably the Moon is not quite big
Enough to cover the Sun and so we get these two kinds of what we call Central solar eclipses if the moon is close to us at what’s called pare then it completely covers the sun we get a total solar eclipse on the other hand if it’s
A little bit farther away it can’t quite cover it even though it’s going straight across and it leaves behind a ring of sunlight an annulus and we call that an annular solar eclipse this is what one of those looks like from a couple years ago uh this took place over Southern
Canada and you can see the moon is going right across the Sun but it’s not quite big enough to cover it completely now this process of the eclipse takes about 3 hours more or less uh from when the moon first takes a nibble out of the sun that’s its silhouette there at upper
Left going to lower right uh and and so you know in the middle is an annular Eclipse like this or if it completely covers the sun it can be a total eclipse like you see there with the the three Central images and the even though the entire Eclipse lasts about three hour
Hours totality that point where the Moon is completely covering the sun lasts a maximum of six and a half or seven minutes that’s all and so that’s the excitement that’s a really exciting part so it turns out that these eclipses of the sun can happen anywhere on the earth
At any time it’s a not totally random but it’s completely uh uh indifferent to where on the earth you are and so this is a um a map of all of the total and annular eclipses the annular are slightly more common uh for a 20-year period and you can see uh that a
Couple of those cross the United States uh you can see there the trace of the one that was in 2017 that’s right here and uh and it kind of looks like a random pattern so uh this is the next 20 years beginning in 2021 running through
2040 and here’s here’s the path of the eclipse coming up here’s the path of the one that was last October an annular Eclipse but still it kind of looks like a random pattern okay so uh Fred espac who calls himself mystery Eclipse put these together for me I had him do a
Slightly different version this is 25 years of just total solar eclipses the annular have been removed now you can start to see a pattern emerging see these two big arcs down in Antarctica or here’s this one coming up in 2024 right here it looks an awful lot the shape
Does to this one in 2006 that went over Africa and Asia that 18-year period is real 18 years 11 days and8 hours to be specific that’s called a sorrow cycle and it’s a repeating cycle of the Earth Moon Sun geometry that repeats almost exactly but because the cycle has that
Eight hours in it during that eight hours the Earth has turned about a third of the way so you’ll get exactly the same geometric shape of the Shadow say in in 2009 this one over here and then 18 years later it’s it repeats but because the eight hours it shifted in
Longitude and so as you can see this pattern has a sort of it repeats in thirds so three sorrow Cycles 18 years 11 days and eight hours times three creates a a repeat pattern where the same eclipse happens over the same part of the world we call that an exmos
That’s your word for the day right out of Harry Potter exmos it’s like some spell being cast Okay so statistically every place on the earth should see a total eclipse of the sun about once every 375 years and I said hm okay well let’s see how that plays out for the US
I I asked a friend of mine who’s a cartographer Nam Michael Zyer to create a map for me of all total solar eclipses crossing the contiguous us from the years 1775 to 2150 that’s 375 years and you can see that there are a lot of
Places on the in the US that do not see a total eclipse West Texas Southern New Mexico a lot of the West doesn’t see it so I said H so okay I went back to Fred espan I Said Fred give me a thousand years of total solar eclipses over the
US and this is what he came up with and you notice there are still places in Texas and southern New Mexico that don’t see totality we’ll get our share here in New England for sure but it’s just the statistical nature of this so because they can happen anywhere
I wanted to show you a couple of eclipses that have happened recently and uh give you a little feel for them uh I’m going to show you a couple of annular and and a total eclipse um in 2021 there was an annular Eclipse that started off in southern Canada went over
Greenland went over the North Pole and ended up in Siberia and you can see the globe there the gray band is the area that you would have to be in in order to see uh the complete annuals now let me explain those other lines there the blue
Lines are uh 20% lines of of partial eclipse so at 80% you’d see 80% eclipse and so forth the red lines are times because the you know the the eclipse happens because the Moon Shadow is traveling across the Earth and so it doesn’t happen instantaneously those red
Lines are half an hour apart and so this is what that uh that path looked like boy it was so close to the US but not quite and so a lot of people had there are a lot of people like me who chase eclipses we all wanted to go see this
But this was during the height of the pandemic and so um you know was it was very complicated not only that but the weather prospects weren’t really very good this is uh angled a c a little differently here’s Alaska down here at the bottom here’s the beginning there
Here’s the Great Lakes down here in the lower right corner and in I’m going to show you a bunch of these Maps red is bad that means it’s going to be cloudy or or likely to be very cloudy and so here we have this Eclipse that was
Taking in place in Canada in a remote stretch of Canada with the we weather prospects really bad and yeah that was during the pandemic you might remember Canada closed its borders so nobody could go see this Eclipse but I was undaunted one of the things I still do
For sky and telescope is create tours for interesting astronomical events and so I chartered a jet I charted an a319 from Delta and we left from the Minneapolis Airport which is down there in the lower left corner we crossed the border north of into Canada north of
Lake Superior and we set up a path to intercept this eclipse of the Sun in midair and it was very exciting it was so exciting that I managed to get a a a friend of mine Rob Marciano from ABC News to come along with us and here’s
His story we turn now to the cosmic event that just a few Northern stretches of the US got to see early this morning an annular Eclipse as the moon crosses the sun our Rob Marciano was one of the lucky few who got a front row seat to to see this natural
Phenomenon just after sunrises morning the moon at its farthest point from the earth passed in front of the Sun for an annular eclipse and creating what’s called a ring of fire looking more like devil horns here off the coast of New Jersey up on rand’s Island in New York
City eager Spectators woke up extra early to catch a glimpse my mom works for NASA so I’ve always been interested in astronomy so I had to come see this but what those areas saw was just a partial eclipse the annular eclipses path traveling through Ontario across Greenland and over the North Pole and
Siberia so to get the full Ring of Fire experience we flew on a special sky and Telescope Charter flight dubbed Eclipse air for sarahy she couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present this is my fourth Eclipse your fourth eclipse ever seen an eclipse from an airplane no this
Is my first my first annular what a treat I’m so excited 88 it is our pleasure to have you with us for this morning viewing of the annular Eclipse you guys ready to take off and do an eclipse we took off from Minneapolis with more than 30 dieh hard Eclipse Chasers
Getting a window seat to this Cosmic event about 80% covered right now at 39,000 ft the plane is flying above 3/4 of the atmosphere making the eclipse appear even brighter and from this view passengers got another minute of annularity due to the speed of the aircraft for them it’s a Celestial dream
Come true I felt my heart was so open I cried and I I could see the moon in front of the sun and it was literally something happened for me where it’s spiritual isn’t it yeah it was spiritual as for the next one all right when’s the next one where we going
Next next one is December 4th of this year it’s a total solar eclipse we will have a flight and and this is uh off the coast of the tip of South America because the only way you’ll be able to see it is from Antarctica the chase rolls on it
Does well there you go my my five seconds of Fame you you notice that there weren’t very many people on that flight that’s because you can only watch out of one side of the oops you can only watch out of one side of the plane and I
Didn’t allow more than two people per row so uh this past April there was what’s called what we call a hybrid solar eclipse off the coast of Australia and U in and in Crossing Indonesia you know it’s a hybrid because look how skinny that path is and it
Turns out out that at either end of that path it’s an annular eclipse and in the middle it’s total that’s why it’s called a hybrid and here’s what’s going on at the beginning and end of the track the the shadow of the moon is actually has to stretch a little bit farther to
Actually reach the Earth whereas in the middle it’s a little bit shorter by the radius of the Earth and so there it’s total and then at either end it’s annular so that’s why we call it a hybrid we saw it out from the deck of a
Ship it was fantastic it was a great event so these are the upcoming solar eclipses and I included that annular from last October um and you can see that they’re all over the place but I want you to notice that the one coming up uh this coming April on April 8th is
Fairly long in duration for a total eclipse in fact it’s one of the eight longest total solar eclipses in this Century so definitely worth worth uh looking for it’s also the case that the the totality that’s coming up uh there’s a place in Texas in the Hill Country of
Texas were the paths of last October’s annular and this coming April’s total solar eclipses cross so a lot of people are going there just to be in the same spot this is what that path of the annular Eclipse looked like crossing the US uh Central America and South America
There were a lot of went right over Albuquerque for example a lot of people were out west to see this I happened to be in the Yucatan with a group of people we were exploring all the Maya ruins this is my group we sought it was a
Beautiful day uh and uh everyone was really happy after that so here’s the one coming up want you to notice that the path the green line there the green band uh only really goes across North America that that’s the only landfall and uh and again you can see
Those everywhere on April 8th it doesn’t matter where you are in North America except for Parts of Alaska you will see a partial solar eclipse a partial solar eclipse but but if you’re in that green band you’ll see a total solar eclipse now I I called attention to those you
Know those those blue lines the 80 60 40 20 and stuff you will hear in the coming weeks and months you’ll hear people talk about how deep this eclipse is how much of the sun is covered now if I were to ask you take a look at this picture and
I ask you how much of the sun is covered well there’s two ways to Define that one astronomers use the term magnitude to tell how much of the Sun’s diameter is covered and then they use a word called obscuration to say how much of the area
Of the sun is covered and believe it or not half of the Sun’s diameter is covered but only about 40% of its surfaces whenever I give these numbers about how much of the sun is I always use obscuration because that I think is a little bit more honest so here are the
Paths of the the the eclipse that crossed the US in 2017 compared with 2024 we’re going to take a little bit closer look at this path coming up in just three months now it starts off over Mexico goes right over mazatan then crosses the Border goes uh skirts both
San Antonio and Austin well let’s take a closer look here you can see San Antonio and Austin goes right over Dallas and Fort Worth a little bit farther north just miss St Louis uh St Louis and Nashville were both in the path for 2017 but not this time uh this time
Indianapolis and Cleveland and buffalo are all on the path Toronto just misses it Montreal is just inside and for where we are the closest place to go would be extreme Northern Vermont and uh and New Hampshire so what I’m showing you here the red line is the
Middle of the path and the two blue lines Define the limit in between which you would see the sun totally eclipsed so here are some partial every as I mentioned everyone in the US clear skies uh assumed will see a partial eclipse that day uh here are some samples of
Different places around the country and what they’ll see poor Quebec just misses it just 99% of the way there and still they don’t get totality now that 99% is really important uh uh because the difference between totality and not seeing totality is incredible totality is really what you want because here’s
All the things that can happen when you see the sun completely covered first of all I mentioned the sky gets dark kind of Twilight everywhere there these phenomena along the edge of the sun uh called Bailey’s beads that’s those little beads of light the the Moon is
Not perfectly smooth and so as the sun is disappearing behind the Moon the last little valleys uh sunlight streams through them and you get these little this little beat effect uh the chromosphere is This brilliant Crimson colored it’s the lower most layer of the sun’s atmosphere it’s
Called the chromosphere and then you get these uh eruptions uh off the surface called prominences and you also get to the eye just before and after this the uh the Moon is completely covering the sun you get that last little bit of of sunlight peeking through but you already began to
See the corona the the atmosphere of the Sun and so you get this What’s called the diamond ring effect now the corona is really what everyone’s excited about who knew that the sun has an atmosphere it does it’s very thin and it has its own light but it’s a million times
Fainter than the rest of the Sun so if you block the sun completely suddenly the corona comes into view now you notice it’s not just an just a blob there there are streamers and and you know arcs and and little Bubbles and stuff that’s because the sun is
Magnetized and the gases in this Corona are roughly two million degrees Fahrenheit and so they’re extremely hot they’re they’re in a plasma State there’s no more atoms it’s all electrons and protons and stuff and they’re controlled by this magnetic field so they take on the shape of the magnetic
Field underneath it now I’m showing you a version of that same image that’s been highly processed to show all of the magnetic field lines this might remind you of those experiments you used to do when you were in grade school where you had a sheet of paper with a magnet under
It and you sprinkled iron filings to see all the magnetic field lines same basic thing is going on here the corona is really a very exciting part it turns out that the corona is not the same shape all the time the sun goes through an 11year cycle of activity and when the
Sun is quiet then the corona tends to be concentrated around its midsection like there it left but when the sun is at its maximum activity which it is right about now then the corona streamers tend to be pretty uniformly distributed all the way around so that Corona on the right is
Kind of what we’re expecting come April now it gets dark and and so the brightest stars and planets become visible this is what the sky will look like on April 8th during totality if you should happen to be in the path uh you’ll certainly see Jupiter and Venus
For sure they’re going to be very close to the Sun uh there’s some other bright stars there that you see that might or might not be visible but I’m I’m figuring that most of these will be visible because this is a pretty long eclipse the path is pretty wide I expect
It to get pretty dark that day and because the path is so wide all kinds of other things happen like the temperature drops and I mentioned birds and animals going to roost they get very confused and then finally there’s a phenomenon called Shadow bands which are more and more often seen it’s an
Interplay of that last little sliver of sun with the upper at atmosphere and the interference patterns that developed from that I was at an eclipse in Chile in 2019 with a group of people and uh we were set up right in front of a big white geodesic
Dome and I happened this is just at the moment that totality is happening I happened to turn around and here’s what was going on you can see the stripes on that white the horizontal stripes take a what look at what it looked like in in real time [Applause]
And bang totality has happened totality has started so those are called Shadow bands now I’ve been describing all these effects I’m gonna let the voice of the people speak for itself this was a total solar eclipse a few years ago that took place almost at Sunset it’s a very
Dramatic event and I’m gonna let this play for a minute or so fality is [Applause] approaching waa Corona diamond ring oh [Applause] Wa oh my God well that kind of gives you a sense and so for this path coming up in April there’s basically two places to be in the path of tality and everywhere else because I have to say I’ve asked people often when I do this in front of a crowd
I’ll say who has seen a total solar eclipse and I see I see some tentative hands trust me if you aren’t sure you have not because as you heard from all that screaming it can be a lifechanging EXP experience uh I can think of a lot
Of analogies but imagine it’s the 4th of July and you know a neighbor comes over and he hands you a little sparkler that you wave around for a couple of minutes versus being in the front row of the Fourth of July concert on on the Boston uh esano that’s kind of like the
Difference and so if you can at if you can make a make your way into the path of totality I don’t know how trains planes automobiles however you want to get there come April 8th if the sky clear it will definitely be worth it now it turns out you wouldn’t be the only
People uh thinking of doing that this is a sort of demographic chart showing what fraction of the United States uh is within a 10-hour Drive of the path of totality basically a day’s drive and it’s a huge fraction of the US and the East Coast if this could become one of
The most widely observed total solar eclipses in history and so why should should you bother well here’s what’s going to happen in Boston it’s going to be a 92 and a half% partial eclipse heading North Manchester a little bit more Lebanon New Hampshire 98 and a half
But it’s not until you get to Burlington that you see totality and all of those other things don’t have the phenomenology don’t have the effects and the the the the circumstances and the visual Impressions that you see when you get to fality so if it’s clear that day
It’s April 8th that’s a Monday take the day off uh if it’s clear Burlington’s only about three and a half hours away if you’re stuck here in cheler here is what you are going to see or thereabouts near cheler uh we are going to see about a 98% Eclipse
Here and uh uh that the the eclipse will last Almost 2 and a half hours but the midpoint will be about 3:30 in the afternoon so the sun will be a little bit past South it’ll be over high up in the southwest um it’ll be uh uh you know
Clear skies uh willing we’ll all have a really pretty dramatic view so now how about the weather well it’s early April right so turns out the statistically the best places to go are toward the Southwest end of the track Mexico Southwest Texas once you get up up here
In the New England the the prospects for clear skies are not that great about 50% at best uh you’ll see a lot of these Cloud charts that I’m showing you but you know what climate is what we predict and weather is what you get so you never
Quite no here’s a series of of satellite maps show you can see the red lines there marking the path of the eclipse for the last six or seven years okay and you can maybe keep your eye there on Northern Vermont and New Hampshire uh versus Southern Texas in
2017 you know everyone sort of wins out except New England uh 2018 it’s pretty bad everywhere except southern Texas 2019 the same thing you can see why I’m going to Southern Texas for this Eclipse 2020 well even Texas wasn’t so great Midwest might have been better 2021 okay and
Then it would have been very clear in in Vermont uh so that’s a plus uh 22 not so much Texas is clear and uh this past April 23rd it would have been a fabulous day uh in Upper New York and uh and Vermont and New Hampshire so we can only hope for Clear
Skies that’s uh you know if you were asked to ask me what should I do I you you’ve sold me I want to go see this Eclipse well if you’re not going to go to Northern uh Vermont New Hampshire I would buy a plane ticket to Dallas
Plenty of Hotels Dallas is in the path you just need to step outside your hotel and look up and you’ll see totality and how you look at it makes all the difference in the world because he want you to do do this safely when you’re looking at a partial solar eclipse it
Doesn’t matter how much of it is covered or not you’re essentially still looking at the sun and so you want to make sure that you have the right kind of protection for your eyes we’re talking about uh glasses or filters that have been approved and have been tested there
Was a big problem in 2017 a lot of fake glasses were coming in from China that hadn’t been passed or tested yet and there are a lot of other things you will hear about definitely sunglasses are not nearly dark enough all these other things they are not dark enough to
Protect your eyes you know they might block to your eye it might seem like the sun is dimmed enough but what you don’t know is that uh a lot of the infrared radiation from the Sun the heat radiation from the Sun can pass through these materials go through the lens of
Your eye and literally cook your redut when you don’t want that to happen now I will say if you manage to get to to where this the the sun is totally eclipsed during totality you can take the glasses off so this is what most people get they get these eyeglass
Things that uh you know go over your ears you if you have a pair or or end up getting a pair I want to make sure that they go um uh in front of your eyeglasses not behind them uh but I have to say I’m a big fan of these cards and
I’ve got one right here it’s a it’s a it’s a card and it’s got a lanyard on it so I can just put this around my neck you know and carry it around with me like that and when I need to take a look I carry it like that and then I can
Just drop it it’s always there that’s my preferred method you know whatever works for you you can use welder glasses you can use uh all kinds of of of safe legitimate uh methods uh but just make sure you’re protecting your eyes very well now if you should happen to be
Using binoculars or telescope the danger is Multiplied because they’re actually Gathering more light they’re like little magnifying lenses this is what you do not want to do you don’t want to be per pointing your your binoculars at the Sun and then having your your glasses on instead that protection those filters
Need to be on the front end of whatever Optics you have these happen to be special purpose ones that are made from a thin film that is favored by photographers I made these specifically for this pair of binoculars but whatever you use they have to be teting okay so you don’t have
The glasses you’re stuck what can you do well there are a couple of ways you can enjoy this Eclipse even without looking at the sun it turns out one is what I call the uh the waffle method the cross fingers projection as the eclipse is passing you cross your fingers you know
In the shape of a waffle like this and let little beads of sunlight stream between them and they’ll be like a bunch of pinhole cameras that will project little crescents on the ground around you here’s when I really like most of of US own a pair of binoculars and so um
This is this is a completely safe way to do it find a tripod set up the tripod low to the ground Mount the binoculars on the tripod however use bungee cords or tape or whatever and uncover one side and point it at the Sun and let the sun
Stream through the binocular now don’t look at the back end instead project the sun onto a white card and you’ll get a beautiful little uh image of the partially eclipsed sun on a white card the closer the card is to the to the binoculars the brighter the image the
Farther away the image gets bigger but not as dark and you can also do what I did here which is to put a little um a little uh cardboard shield around the binocular that makes for a nice Dark Shadow this is great for group viewing great for kids uh they can see the
Eclipse and it and you know it’s it’s a sort of an indirect way that doesn’t endanger them as at all all right I know what you’re saying but I want to use my camera Kelly okay we’re going to talk cameras a little bit here any camera will do something to
Record the eclipse there are different kinds you know your smartphone phone camera they’re getting better all the time uh pointing it at the Sun for brief periods of time will not hurt it you won’t get a very good image I promise you but uh because it just can’t handle
That that bright of source um you if you have an older style uh uh point and shoot camera that will be great too uh if you have a a regular you know an older style camera with interchangeable lenses you can take uh all kinds of great photos of the eclipse
Taking video is great uh what I like to do is um I take a a a my my smartphone or a video camera put it on a tripod and just take a wide angle view of me and everybody else around me that captures all the excitement all the hoop and
Hollering uh and and somebody else will take a good picture that I can go and find elsewhere online or whatever just remember especially if this is going to be your first Eclipse whether it be partial or total don’t obsess about taking images somebody else will take great images that that you can have
Enjoy the experience yourself so okay so the important thing to remember here is that all of these cameras ideally should have a filter in front of them for the partial phases of the eclipse now if you’re stuck here in the Cher area for example in the middle sex uh uh
Uh um area you’re all going to see a partial solar eclipse at day no one here around here is going to see totality so every time you look at the sun you either need glasses or if you’re looking through your cell phone you you can even
Take your glasses and put in front of the of the of the uh of the lenses of the of the smartphone only during totality is it safe to not use the glasses at all and just let your eyes injo enjoy the site so if you’ve got a telescope the
Telescope needs a filter too uh you can buy these filters that one of the reasons I’m giving this talk now and not you know two months from now is to give you time to sort of prepare if you if you have a telescope that’s great uh you should get
A filter for it which a lot of the telescope manufacturers have customized filters for the tube that you have um they’re pretty easily obtainable uh they can be as little as like10 or $20 for a for a polyester filter all the way up to$ 80 to $100 for a glass filter like
The one you see there on the left but just make sure whatever filter you use that it’s fitting over your telescope snugly and if you’ve got a finder scope make sure you cover that uh because you don’t want sunlight ruining that as well now if you’re going to take
Pictures with a telephoto lens and I know I suspect a lot of you still have older style cameras with telephoto lenses be aware that the sun is really pretty tiny in the sky even with something like a um uh a a 400 mm lens uh that’s for a fullframe camera the the
Orange numbers are for what were called crop sensors which a lot of cameras have a lower cost cameras that are not full frame so if you had a 300 millimeter crop frame that top middle one here this is this is what your picture would show pretty decent but you still need a
Pretty long focal length in order to see that so um there are lots of ways that you can take pictures Well using uh these cameras any of these cameras and there are all kinds of ways that you can take them badly uh for one thing you want to
Disable the automatic Focus you know these automatic focusers are used to being seeing like tree limbs and stuff like that that they can focus on when you get something up in the sky it has a much more difficult time figuring out what the focus is so if you can you want
Want to focus manually and then lock put a piece of tape on the focusing ring so that it doesn’t move and you just vary your exposures to all you know this is some samples this is on the more technical side but depending on your on
The on the lens that you have and the sensitivity setting the iso setting that you have you’re going to use different kinds of of um of exposures just take lots of different exposures you’ll have plenty of time for for most situations you want to take really fast exposures
Even with a filter in place because the sun is still really bright um it’s not obvious here but the edge of the sun is darker than the center so where we are going to be here in cheler we’re going to see something like this here at lower right and um that’s
Actually the darkest part of the sun’s disc so you’re going to want to take a longer exposure there uh to capture that well and then if you happen to be in tality there’s all these I’ve talked about this before these are are are take uh generally longer exposures those are
The uh lengths of time the key here is couple things make sure that your camera’s focused um to the best you can and then and then lock that focus in don’t use autofocus um and then just take a whole bunch of different exposures at at different exposures and
All kinds of levels one of them will come out great I I promise you but you will get better results if you use some of these tips uh first of all use a tripod Focus manually as I mentioned if you’ve got a filter on the front end of your camera usually it’s
Called a UV filter but it’s really just for dust take that off because you’ll get uh secondary Reflections if you’ve got a point and shoot camera uh you want to cover the zoom lens the cover the um um uh the um the flash on it so it
Doesn’t go off during the middle of the of the eclipse now all that talk I just said about you know the fancy cameras this is exactly what most of you are going to do I just know it you’re going to point your smartphone you’re going to put your eclipse glasses in front and
You’re going to try to take a picture that way and guess what you can get a pretty good picture but you won’t get it doing what she’s doing right there there are some tips I’m going to give you right now the first thing is to buy yourself a little clamp
That can hold your camera steady on top of a tripod you can see one there at left that costs about Amazon is full of these things they’re about $20 doesn’t include the tripod but most of us have a tripod or have access to one and here’s
A here’s my little secret if you have a selfie stick probably the stick part screws into the clamp part that holds your phone if you unscrew those that little screw hole there that you see indicated with the red arrow that will fit a tripod and so you can try that now
Another thing you can do I’ve seen a bunch of these I have one myself I I used it to take this picture here uh it’s a little clamp on telephoto lens that uh allows you to take you know close-up images of anything or or the
Sun for that matter so I I I did it just Basics here I I got one of the I have one of these lenses I took these pictures yesterday there was snow all over the ground and I cobbled together a solar filter there you see it in the
Front I cut up one of those pairs of viewing glasses and I taped it to the front of the lens and this was the result I got on the left through that lens after a lot of careful focusing and diddling around that’s un that’s not retouched at all it’s exactly how the
Camera took it and you can see comparing it to the picture on the right which was taken by a spacecraft of the sun there are some sunspots on the Sun that that show up here there’s a couple of big ones here there’s a couple of smaller
Ones here that are up here so this is a pretty decent image but what I must say is if you’ve got a newer model smartphone camera the cameras in there are excellent and they come in with a a built-in telephoto often as well so you might not need that clamp on telephoto
Lens you can just use the camera itself one of the things though that the smartphones are not good at is letting you control taking the picture so there are apps available that you can buy that override the camera’s automated functions and let you control things
Like the Zoom and the focus and so forth now I want to tell you about one that’s been specifically developed for uh solar eclipses it’s called solar snap it’s about $15 and it comes It’s a combination of a filter which you see there on the left
And an app which controls a lot of the functions of your camera so I tried out solar snap yesterday uh I happen to have some wild turkeys in my backyard that’s an actual the middle there it’s an actual picture of a turkey uh not far from my my uh my office window uh
Getting a drink out of the bird bath and you can see the controls there for zoom and exposure and focus those are all really good they’ll work on your camera even if you’re not doing an eclipse but during the eclipse uh this app has other features like we’ll take an automated
Sequence of images for you it’s it’s a very good program there are others out there uh solar snap is one I have a familiarity with so if you if you want I’d encourage you to get that no matter what however no matter how you’re taking your pictures with your smartphone you need
One of these it’s a Bluetooth shutter control anytime you’ve ever like me uh taken a selfie and fumbled to find the the button on the face of the phone to take the picture this solves that problem it’s a little separate uh Bluetooth uh transmitter that uh that syncs to your phone through Bluetooth
And controls the camera function and in your hand you can hold this and that way when you’re taking pictures of the eclipse if your camera’s on a tripod or whatever it happens to be you can take pictures with your smartphone without ever touching it it’s a very good
Investment and believe it or not you can find these things for as little as$ five my last bit of of uh uh advice for camera taking is that do not wait until the day of the eclipse to try all this out for starters especially if you’re going to
Be stuck here in chelmford well stuck is a relative word we’re going to see a fantastic partial eclipse in chelmford and and in the surrounding towns um you don’t need to wait until Eclipse day to practice taking photos of the sun because the Sun is going to be the sun
Whether it’s partially covered by the moon or not so you can you can you know practice with a filter and remember that the sun is going to be pretty high in the sky so you’re going to be pointing the camera up high and you’re going to
Be looking at the bottom of the screen the other thing you can be doing right now because the Moon is in the evening Sky the moon and the sun are just about the same size as I as we’ve mentioned uh earlier on and also the full moon is
About the same brightness as the sun through one of the solar filters so you can practice your exposures you can practice focusing all that stuff using the moon or the sun uh between now the eclipse and I guarantee it will improve your results so these are some things
Not to forget make sure you have got plenty of memory uh and batteries and your filters of course but the one thing I want you to all remember to do especially if this is your first Eclipse don’t fuss about the cameras just make sure that you look look up watch what’s
Going on enjoy the view because it’s special there is not going to be another uh total solar eclipse in the continental United States um the contiguous us until the year 2044 that’s a long time to wait and so you want to take advantage of this one while you
Can here are a couple of sites that I want to recommend to you uh to get more information than than what you got here in this hour um skying telescope magazine is owned by the American Astronomical Society which is like the the last word when it comes to All
Things astronomical they have a terrific website portal eclipse. a.org where you can find all kinds of information how to order filters uh how to set up your camera uh how to view with with a bunch of kids uh what you know what to expect and all that kind of stuff of course sky
And Telescope the magazine I worked for also has a big science portal for the eclipse uh and I encourage you to look at those there are others as well but those other sites specialty sites are linked from these two so that’s all I’m going to give you for
Now and I want to close to talk about a couple of the eclipses that are coming up after this one we have this same saying in the eclipse chasing business that once you’ve seen uh a total eclipse for the first time the first four words out of your
Mouth are when’s the next one and so with that in mind I’m going to show you some upcoming future attractions there’s an annular Eclipse later this year in October and you know you might you look at that track it’s the two red lines it goes over the Patagonia region of South
America and boy you know there’s not a lot of land again this is a weather prospects map so uh blue is good red is bad and right in the middle there you see that little red circle yeah that’s Easter Island Easter Island is in the path of this annular eclipse and so um
You know a lot of people go to see solar eclipses because they happen in places that are um from a travel point of view just exciting to be at and Easter Island I would submit is certainly one of those cases then there’s no total eclipses at
All in or annular in 2025 next year but in 26 uh it resumes again there’s a total solar eclipse that starts off in Iceland where the weather prospects are really bad even if there weren’t volcanoes going off and then crosses uh Spain excuse me and over the Western
Mediterranean and so I’ll be taking a group here to a little town in Spain we’ve rented this castle and uh we’re going to have a great time uh we’ll be seeing that Eclipse just about at Sunset the one I really want to call your attention to is in August of 2027 you
Can see the track there uh crosses Northern Africa goes down the western side of the Saudi Peninsula and the weather prospects are generally quite good about as close to a sure thing as you’re ever going to see you notice that it crosses Egypt and in fact the path of
The eclipse crosses over Luxor Egypt and this will be uh an eclipse that features about 6 and a half minutes of t ity it is the longest total solar eclipse for the rest of our lifetimes and so uh if you’ve ever wanted to go to Egypt here’s
A good excuse for doing so um and uh a lot of people are planning to go there to see all the Antiquities go to Luxor uh see you know cruise up and down the Nile all of those things last two more I want to talk about here’s an annular
Eclipse in uh about four years from now and again it crosses you know the the Amazon rainforest big deal but it also goes over this place which is the Galapagos and so again if you if you’re looking for a reason to go to the galpagos January of 28 would be my my uh
Suggestion for you the last one I’m going to show you is uh coming up it’s more than four years away but this is how far in advance I work on these things it’s going to cross um Australia under very good weather conditions from the northwest corner where the kimberle
That’s a fantastic geological formation through the Outback a place called Devil’s Marbles and then it goes right over Sydney now this is July but that’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere and my understanding is that Sydney gets pretty cloudy uh during winter so you might want to if you’re going to uh Australia
You might pick one of these uh better spots this past April I went to Australia uh to do a little Recon for this and uh you know we we saw the Kimberly’s beautiful territory there this is a place in the middle of the country called Devil’s marbles fantastic
Geologic formations and of course Sydney one of the world’s great cities in the process of this I got stuck yes literally stuck in the outback with my rental car and had it had to have a guy tow me out I was miles away from anywhere and I was lucky that he came
Along it’s uh my wife was with me at the time and I guarantee you there was a lot of screaming and cursing going on in that car at that time but now we kind of laugh about it it’s a good story to tell in any case if you’re thinking about
Going to one of these other eclipses besides the one in 2024 it is not too early to start planning for that lots of places already have tours planned in some cases the tours are mostly full and uh if you if you want to go on some tours I could highly recommend the ones
That that I set up at skying telescope but uh you know whatever works for you is is good enough I hope that you all have clear skies here on Eclipse day uh whether you’re here or or You’ ventured someplace to get directly into the Moon Shadow it’s going to be a fantastic
Event and GI I’m going to turn it back to you I’m going to stop the share and maybe we can take some questions I see a bunch of them I see like 40 well there’s 40 comments in chat let’s start with the Q&A maybe sounds good let’s see what have we
Got Lisa asks where will you be in April uh I will be in in Fredericksburg Texas um we actually have two tours going one’s in Texas the other’s off that goes at maalan I will be with a group of 250 people my new best friends and so we’re hoping for Clear Skies that
Day great let’s see um I do know a lot of people have said that they are going to Burlington Vermont so everybody have fun up there but um Diana says my family is going to Burlington for the total solar eclipse what should we do if the
Day of the eclipse comes and it’s cloudy right so um here’s the thing uh Diana um if it’s going to be cloudy all over New England right then I would still go to Burlington because you might not see the Sun but it’s still going to get dark right the the temperature will still
Drop all of those some of the things will happen um I I believe me I went I have been disappointed a few times a couple years ago I went to Antarctica to see a total solar eclipse it we had only a 10% chance of of it not being cloudy
And sure enough it was cloudy that day but boy did it get dark it was one of the darkest eclipses I’ve ever experienced and you’ll so you’ll still be able to say that you experienced totality even if you didn’t get to see the sun awesome so this is a good question
Teresa asks where do we purchase these approved eyeglasses or eyewear right so Teresa I would go um if you can remember eclipse. a.org eclipse. a.org that there’s a whole page there devoted to Eclipse safety and list of all the manufacturers that uh are approved and I
Can tell you the names of two of them uh that that if you can remember them one is called I’m not making this up rainbow Symphony that’s an outfit based in California that’s actually where sky and Telescope gets its glasses rainbow Symphony and the other one is based in
The midwest called American Paper Optics both of those are approved but there are all kinds of them that you can that you can get from and Trust uh you might actually check with your libraries Johnny I don’t know if if the Cher library has has uh uh gone out and
Bought a whole bunch but but there are funding there’s funding available for libraries to get bulk uh glasses so that you know what I was just thinking I got this question I want to say a month or two back someone definitely preparing themselves and um we we weren’t sure at
That time I think there still hasn’t been an answer yet so I might pose that question to Jill our head of programming just to see if maybe we will so we we’ll keep you all posted keep asking us yeah and and while we’re on the topic Diana
Maybe had a follow up how long are the eclipse glasses safe to use they will last really a long time as long as they’re not physically damaged like cracked um you can tell really easily uh you can take your your your whatever you’re using and just kind of hold it up
To the sun quickly and if you see little streaming like holes where the sun is coming through then you know it’s not safe anymore and you you should throw it out they’re really here’s the thing buy them now they’re inexpensive now right there’re there may be a150 $2 doar a
Piece if you go out and buy them if you wait until the last day I guarantee that they will be more expensive I have a niece who lives in Portland Oregon I sent her a bunch of eclipse glasses in 2017 and the night before the eclipse
She had people banging on on her door because they knew she had them paying her $20 a piece for these glasses that I’d sent her so don’t wait please don’t wait wow I have also written down these websites as a just in case two that you’ve recommended just so that I can
Pass those over to Jill just to include those with the recording too right um so we’ll make sure that you folks get that info um Steve asks can solar snap be used with one of the solar eyeglass filters I’m not sure what you mean Steve
If you uh so solar snap when you buy it you get a little packet which includes filters to put over the front of your uh your smartphone camera and actually a couple pair of the of the you know the the eclipse glasses for you yourself that’s the physical part of it and then
In the packet is a QR code to download the app for your Android or iPhone that will take over the controls and do all those Nifty Things that I was talking about so it’s a package uh against about 15 bucks uh just look for solar snap um again there are others
You know and there are other there are other apps that can control your phone’s function too the thing about solar snap is like that clui thing I did with the uh the solar filter that I you know cut up and put in front of the lens that’s
Not the best Optical quality what you will get with solar snap is a sort of better quality membrane filter that will give you sharper images than you otherwise might get all right let’s see someone has asked I have family in Toledo Ohio where they might be right on the edge of the
Solar eclipse path or just outside of it where can I find out for certain right so the two websites I will lead you to other websites there is one uh website called I think um Eclipse 2024 dog and there you can uh drill down and every conceivable community
Uh is listed there the one thing I I and and uh you know if you if you if you can’t figure it out go to thatas website eclipse. as.org and it will lead you to places where you can get customize uh specifications for your location wherever you might be I will tell you
That if they’re right on the edge right and they might be just outside of it they better find some friends or make a restaurant reservation in in the path because you close is not going to you’ll be very disappointed all right let’s see Steve asks how fast would you need to be
Traveling on the ground in order to keep up with the eclipse or stay in totality great question so the moon’s path is the Moon’s Shadow is moving across the Earth uh at roughly its orbital speed and so it’s supers Sonic especially near the beginning and the end of the path uh it
Is it is many hundreds of miles an hour and in fact there was a very celebrated case back in the 1970s where uh there was a total solar eclipse and uh some scientists arranged to use one of the Concord supersonic transports with special windows in the ceiling and they they traveled along the
Path of totality and it lasted more than an hour for them so if you happen to have access to a supersonic plane go for it sounds good let’s see um Karen asks if if um do you have any app suggestions that would help identify planets in the
Night sky oh I have a great one Karen um it’s called I mean there are many many apps uh and they’re all pretty good some are more involved than others and some are not particularly intuitive to use this is one that that uh at the school
Where I taught the fifth graders use it so if you consider yourself as smart as a fifth grader this is the one to get it’s called stellarium the word stellar St l l a r then with i m at the end stellarium it’s free uh it’s uh it’s
Open source software it works on your your phone or or on your desktop or your iPad and it’s a very very good program I use it all the time uh when I’m looking stuff up and I can highly recommend it all right let’s see um what are the
Spheres behind you ah yes so um one of the things I uh jna mentioned that my specialization is uh space exploration and planetary science when I was at Sky and Telescope I knew everything about the planets I followed all the NASA missions I was deep I was a deep embed
If you will uh and so a lot of those missions delivered enough uh information to make a globe of that particular Planet so there’s only one globe of the earth back there of all of them uh it’s the one on the far on the far uh left
This one right here and it’s not just any ordinary globe of the earth it’s a globe of Earth with all the eclipse paths plotted on it for the rest of this century and the ones going uh left to right uh next to it are Mars the Moon
Venus is behind my head a celestial sphere a uh topographic M globe of the Moon topographic globe of Mars and another celestial sphere so that’s that’s sort of my geeky niche in the globe making uh manufacturing process love it let’s see I think Steve has a clarifying question about solar snap but
Is solar snap app it’s free by itself is it free by itself it if you uh I I don’t know the answer to that Steve what I know is that um uh when I got it I had a QR code that allowed me to download it I
Think uh we should all go running right out and look uh in the uhu in the uh Apple store or the uh Google Play Store and type in solar snap and see what we get I wouldn’t be surprised if they were giving it away for
Free all right I have to get the answer for that that’s a great question I don’t know let’s see Lisa says traffic jams I sat in them for the Oregon total eclipse but it was worth it thanks for sharing Lisa yeah Lisa was that your first one
Was that your first tality if it was I know you’re itching to see another I I’m sure you are and I hope you get to see it uh again this uh this coming April it was it’s true you know especially for people who are are not totally invested
It’s a three-hour long event but totality only lasts a couple of minutes and so what happens is these crowds of people would gradually build up over the course of the morning then totality happens and once it was over everybody wanted to get out of town and like six
Eight hour traffic jams were not unheard of in like Wyoming and Oregon it was crazy third one she says okay well I hope you get many many more uh in in uh in the years ahead let’s see I’m looking in the chat for some questions here I know some
Folks we’ve talked about the glasses and where you might find those and like I said I’ll make sure we get those websites to you folks um let’s see bots of Burlington Vermont folks here we go bris says will frell as Harry Cary does a sketch with Jeff Goldblum
And and stared into the sun it was quite funny thank you for sharing we I’ll have to Google that later on today you know um it’s it’s it’s really that’s funny um I’ve just put in chat the names of the two companies that uh that that sell the most glasses uh in
2017 uh president Trump famously uh walked out to the edge of the white house uh with it with Melania and looked up at the eclipse some partially Eclipse Sun without any eclipse glasses on uh that was a a howl um there was a case of somebody in New
York in the New York area who like look your eyes just think about during your everyday lives when you’re in a situation where you like suddenly find yourself looking at the sun you turn away You’re refle to not stare at the sun is is great but there are some
People and I don’t know what they ate or drank or smoked to get to this state of mind but you know they will they will like hold their eyes open while they’re looking at the sun thinking that they’ll get some sort of like greater Enlightenment and in those kinds of
Cases you can actually permanently damage your retina uh there’s one or two cases sometimes it’s only temporary and and rare occasions it is permanent and so um I I just wouldn’t recommend it we we at Sky telescope obviously don’t want you ever ever looking at the sun without Optical
Protection however I will probably have to admit that we have all looked at a sunset uh and not create seen gotten any eye damage from that’s because the atmosphere is filtering out most of the sunlight so there are exceptions I suppose gotcha let’s see um DJ asks what
Was the iso standard that you mentioned that people should look out for right so on on the inside of the uh of the so like here’s the the pretty front side of this on the back side is all the fine print where that so this material has actually been laboratory tested uh for
To be safe to block out literally it blocks out all but one part in a 100,00 of the sun’s visible light but it also blocks out ultraviolet and infrared as well and that’s what that testing standard is all about if if your glasses have that ISO certification then they
Are they are sort of you know uh lab certified to be safe all right let’s see more questions here oh okay so so Dennis has a great question when I showed those pictures of totality with these sort of filaments coming out uh can you see actual
Movement it it’s it it’s very slow like in human scale uh Dennis there was a um a project in 2017 called a mega Eclipse I think it was and because the path of the eclipse was crossing the entire United States and because it took like an hour and a
Half to do that you could imagine that the Corona and the streamers that you saw at the beginning of that would be somewhat different than the ones you saw at the end and so they set up telescopes all along that path and they did see some motion small scale motion but it’s
Not like you’re going to see them you know like radiating out um this is matter that is being confined by the um by the magnetic field of the Sun and it’s not like it’s really erupting off of the surface so much as being confined into these patterns that you
See see just clarifying how many times have you seen totality from Katie okay Katie I am for total solar eclipses I am 12 for 15 I saw I’ve been to 15 I experienced all 15 I have uh missed seeing three of them including the very first one that I
Tried to see in Hawaii it was very disappointing I I missed one I was uh in in um South Africa uh with a meteor olist with me and uh and the clouds rolled in off the Indian Ocean and we couldn’t outrun them it was a very very disappointing disappointing time
Especially for all the people that are with me I’ll tell you the most exciting one I missed I went to Kenya in 2012 to see a total eclipse of the Sun that was to last 12 seconds only 12 seconds and I went from Boston to Kenya to see this
And not only was it cloudy there was a thunderstorm Not only was there a thunderstorm there was a sandstorm that was strong enough to knock over all of our tripods but it still got dark so it was fun oh my gosh and I do see so Steve made a comment um
I noticed differences and Optical Clarity between several different solar eyewear um options during the October Eclipse some looked fuzzy right so um uh uh Steve that’s very perceptive of you the ones that look like this with the very dark uh polymer um filters are generally of lower Optical quality if
You see stuff that looks like aluminized myar even if it’s a thin it tends to be a very thin uh sheet that’s much higher quality and in fact in some sense it’s better quality than even the glass filters so Steve if you were looking since you ask the question maybe you’re
Looking to get some there is a company called b b a a d r B it’s a company in Germany that makes special films this this it comes in sheets you’ve got to make your own filters but it’s great if you want to make your own for like binoculars or a
Telescope or something like that that is some of the best quality Optical quality for taking not only the best uh quality pictures but if you were using them for like binoculars or a telescope that you’re looking through the same deal glass filters also tend to be quite high quality um and different different
Filters render the sun in different colors you know they’re filtering out most of the light some of them leave it a really bright orange is some of them are kind of a a creamy uh yellow kind of like you imagine the sun being some even
Make the sun look a little bit blue I don’t like those at all so you have to kind of test around and I think this is our last question of the presentation but Leslie asks which other planets have solar eclipses well that’s a great question uh
We need we need so what we need is a planet with a moon that’s large enough and close enough to cast a shadow onto the surface of the planet Mars has two small moons but they’re really kind of small uh and so on Mars you can only see
Partial eclipses or annular uh Jupiter can see Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune can all see total solar eclipses because they all have all have big big moons so um uh you know Earth is not the only one uh but um I going to add one little fascinating
Detail here before we close you know the moon is it used to be much closer to the Earth than it is now and even now the Moon is moving away from us at about two inches a year and So eventually there will come a point in time roughly a
Billion years from now when the moon is too far away from the Earth to ever completely cover the sun again and there will be no more total solar eclipses be a sad day for Earth not something we have to worry about but it is in our future it’s in our future that someday
We won’t have total solar eclipses anymore all right well thank you so much everyone for joining us tonight um Kelly let me quick I’m sorry let me quickly ask Jones Jan said when when will it start in Burlington I’m not sure when it start the midpoint Joan will be just
About what it is here in Boston roughly 3:30 in the afternoon all right thank you so much you heard that everybody going to Burlington um so plan accordingly um again thank you so much Kelly for presenting for us tonight and giving us some great info to get us all prepped um
And this has been recorded so we’ll send out an email to you folks with the recording as well as some helpful links that Kelly shared um so look for those sometime maybe tomorrow or early next week all right have a good night everybody have a great Night