Final New Moon Sunday Starts the Countdown to the Great American Eclipse

[Disir]

It seems that everyone is eagerly awaiting the shady drama that will be enacted in the skies over North America on Aug. 21. It is a play whose script was written eons ago: On that third Monday in August, the celestial wanderings of the sun, Earth and moon will cause our natural satellite to pass directly in front of the sun, resulting in a total eclipse on Aug. 21.

The narrow band of totality, averaging some 70 miles (113 kilometers) wide and stretching about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) from the Pacific coast of Oregon to the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, will provide a spectacle that has not been seen from any part of the contiguous United States in nearly 40 years.

To say that this has been an eagerly awaited astronomical event is an understatement. [The Best ISO-Certified Gear to See the 2017 Solar Eclipse]
Final New Moon Sunday Starts the Countdown to the Great American Eclipse

There is an app for that.

Who is psyched?

 

[waltky]

possum gonna hide - he thinks it's a bad omen...

More than spectacle: Eclipses create science and so can you
WASHINGTON — Aug 14, 2017, The sun is about to spill some of its secrets, maybe even reveal a few hidden truths of the cosmos. And you can get in on the act next week if you are in the right place for the best solar eclipse in the U.S. in nearly a century.

Astronomers are going full blast to pry even more science from the mysterious ball of gas that's vital to Earth. They'll look from the ground, using telescopes, cameras, binoculars and whatever else works. They'll look from the International Space Station and a fleet of 11 satellites in space. And in between, they'll fly three planes and launch more than 70 high-altitude balloons . "We expect a boatload of science from this one," said Jay Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer who has traveled to 65 eclipses of all kinds. Scientists will focus on the sun, but they will also examine what happens to Earth's weather, to space weather, and to animals and plants on Earth as the moon totally blocks out the sun. The moon's shadow will sweep along a narrow path, from Oregon to South Carolina.

Between NASA and the National Science Foundation, the federal government is spending about $7.7 million on next Monday's eclipse. One of the NASA projects has students launching the high-altitude balloons to provide "live footage from the edge of space" during the eclipse. But it's not just the professionals or students. NASA has a list of various experiments everyday people can do. "Millions of people can walk out on their porch in their slippers and collect world-class data," said Matt Penn, an astronomer at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

Scientists and volunteers will observe the upcoming eclipse for further study.​

Penn is chief scientist for a National Science Foundation-funded movie project nicknamed Citizen CATE. More than 200 volunteers have been trained and given special small telescopes and tripods to observe the sun at 68 locations in the exact same way. The thousands of images from the citizen-scientists will be combined for a movie of the usually hard-to-see sun's edge. Mike Conley, a Salem, Oregon, stock trader whose backyard is studded with telescopes, jumped at the chance to be part of the science team. "Who knows? Maybe a great secret will come of this, the mysteries of the sun will be revealed, because we're doing something that's never been done before and we're getting data that's never been seen before," he said. "A big discovery will come and everybody will say, 'Hey, we were part of that!'"

You don't need to have telescopes to help out. You can use the iNaturalist app via the California Academy of Sciences and note the reaction of animals and plants around you. You can go to a zoo, like the Nashville Zoo, where they are asking people to keep track of what the animals are doing. The University of California, Berkeley, is seeking photos and video for its Eclipse Megamovie 2017, hoping to get more than 1,000 volunteers. Even with all the high-tech, high-flying instruments now available, when it comes to understanding much of the sun's mysteries, nothing beats an eclipse, said Williams College's Pasachoff. That's because the sun is so bright that even satellites and special probes can't gaze straight at the sun just to glimpse the outer crown, or corona. Satellites create artificial eclipses to blot out the sun, but they can't do it as well as the moon, he said.

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[yiostheoy]

It seems that everyone is eagerly awaiting the shady drama that will be enacted in the skies over North America on Aug. 21. It is a play whose script was written eons ago: On that third Monday in August, the celestial wanderings of the sun, Earth and moon will cause our natural satellite to pass directly in front of the sun, resulting in a total eclipse on Aug. 21.

The narrow band of totality, averaging some 70 miles (113 kilometers) wide and stretching about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) from the Pacific coast of Oregon to the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, will provide a spectacle that has not been seen from any part of the contiguous United States in nearly 40 years.

To say that this has been an eagerly awaited astronomical event is an understatement. [The Best ISO-Certified Gear to See the 2017 Solar Eclipse]
Final New Moon Sunday Starts the Countdown to the Great American Eclipse

There is an app for that.

Who is psyched?

I am looking forward to it.

Eclipses are a rare treat.