NASA's Curious Universe - Sun Series: Bonus: Dispatches from the Path of Totality

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

On April 8, 2024, North America experienced its last total solar eclipse until the 2040s. As the Moon’s shadow fell across the U.S., NASA sent Curious Universe producers out into the field across the path of totality to talk to space nerds and eclipse scientists. In this special bonus episode of our Sun Series, we’ll relive the special day together.

Hey, space nerds. We hope you enjoyed the grand finale of our Sun series last week. But we couldn't get enough of the sun. So today, we're back with a little treat, a bonus episode. This is NASA's curious universe. Our universe is a wild and wonderful place. I'm your host, Patty Boyd. And I'm your co-host, Jacob Pinter.

In this podcast, NASA is your tour guide. On April 8th, a total solar eclipse passed over North America. 40 million people tuned in to watch NASA's live stream and millions more travel to the path of totality themselves to experience it in person. And you better believe we weren't going to miss it. Our audio team fanned out across the U.S. from Texas to Ohio to bring back dispatches from the path of totality.

Today, we'll hear from space nerds we met in the wild. We hope you enjoy reliving this special day with us, whether you got to see the eclipse in person or experience it through NASA's live broadcast. And to kick off the celebration, here's Christian Elliott, Curious Universe producer. Hi, Patty. Hi, Jacob. Christian, we sent you to Texas for the eclipse, right? That's right. Like millions of people across the country, I was on a pilgrimage to the path of

totality. Flying and then driving hundreds of miles to experience what I hoped would be four and a half minutes of magic and the best shot in the country at clear weather, according to long-term forecasts at least. This is Christian Elliott, Curious Universe producer. It's Saturday, April 6th. I'm in Dallas, Texas, and just got in the rental car to drive down to Kerrville, Texas, which is five hours south, where we're going to be for totality. My partner, Summer, was with me, and we had plenty of snacks for the drive. Sure, I'd love to do a haul.

Oh, I didn't even see these go in the bag. Here we have some dark chocolate covered as brus soybeans. We've got our latte in a can. And... Oh, I forgot about it. Sounds like you had plenty of caffeine. Yeah, for that drive, it was necessary. I was a day early, since I was reporting for NASA,

I wanted to capture all the lead-up for this big celestial event. Are we going the wrong way on one way? I hope not, but maybe. Anyway, eventually, I reached the flowery rolling hills of southern Texas and the Curville Folk Festival. The Curville Folk Festival sounds like, a music festival, Christian, which is not a bad place to watch the Eclipse. Yeah, so my first stop was this music festival.

It was at a ranch just outside of the tiny town of Kerrville. It's an annual event, but this year they were calling it the Kerr clips festival. Good morning. How's it going? Good. I'm headed over to the Meadow area, Big Meadow area, to do an interview. Chris Vans? Yeah.

Risk bands. All right? Yeah. Okay. Meadow is that way. Okay. Now, for a lot of people, an eclipse is an amazing, emotional thing to see. You might make plans weeks in advance to get to totality and see it,

just like these festival goers had. But I was there to meet scientists, and for them, this is serious business. They make plans years in advance, and they set up all this scientific equipment for a brief, few-minute glimpse at the sun's atmosphere, it's corona. They travel the world following the moon's shadow, and each time they only get one shot. at getting it right.

Amid the guitar circles and tents, we ducked under a rope and eventually found Ben Bow. Hello. Hello. Christian? Yes. I'm Ben. Good to meet you. Ben, good to meet you too.

How's it going? Pretty good. Yeah? Ben's a solar physicist who studies eclipses. This is his sixth one. He's been to places like Antarctica to view them. He works with this 40-person team of scientists from across the world. over here we are, this is just our base camp, you know, the human element of things.

This is our observing tent. Ben led me into this big green, roofless tent full of equipment. Sixteen telescopes with solar filters split between two stands, tables covered with laptops, each one is showing an image of the sun from each of the telescopes. So anyway, here we have two mounts. Each of these has eight telescopes. Each one of these telescopes is doing a slightly different thing.

Sure. Can I come in there if I take my shoes off? Oh yeah, yeah, please do. And then you can come in, yeah. Each telescope stand, holding eight telescopes in a custom metal frame off to one side, had this long orange cylinder way off to the other side, like a waiter balancing a tray of drinks. Looks like a serious counterweight. Yeah, so this counterweight is actually just PVC pipe, and then we just go to our location

look around for rocks, and this is just full of rocks right now. Local Texas rocks are. Texas rocks are counterweights. Then those cables are run to a set of laptops. So we have each laptop runs each pair of telescopes. I was going to say lots of laptops. Yes, lots of laptops. TSA usually doesn't like us very much,

because they're like, you have how many laptops? With all of these instruments, Ben's team was set up to get a look at the Sun's Corona that's impossible outside of an eclipse. This is super cool. But I know from experience that when you're watching an eclipse on the ground, you can know the right place to be at the right time years in advance.

But it all comes down to getting clear weather on the big day. Yeah, you're right. And unfortunately, the weather report was not looking good here. Ben had chosen Texas Hill Country for the same reason that I had, because long-term forecast predicted clear skies. But now it was cloudy. So how important is it to get clear skies tomorrow for this stuff here? Yeah, so that's the one major downside to being here on the ground

is that we really are at the mercy of what the atmosphere would like to give us. With the eclipse, you get that one shot every year, year and a half or so. And so for us, we get very sad when there are clouds because it does definitely tamper the data. They had clear skies when they set everything up, but today, when they hoped to calibrate the equipment, it was cloudy. But luckily, they had a couple of backup plans. For starters, there were two other teams like Benz stationed on the,

the ground with telescope setups in Mexico and Arkansas. But even if our three ground stations, you know, hypothetically all three could be clouded out, it's not impossible that that happens. But that's why we also have the kite mission, which is in southern Texas. Christian, can you explain this kite mission? Yeah, this is their other ace in the hole. They're going to try and fly a huge kite with instruments on it, way up above the clouds. It actually looks kind of similar to the classic drawing you see of Benjamin Franklin with the key on the kite.

It's a bit like that where there's a large kite at the top, then the key is like the instrument hanging part way down, and then there's a long cable that runs to the ground. Only this kite was flying over a mile in the air. And if that wasn't high enough, NASA was planning to fly its two WB57 research planes even higher. The idea was that someone somewhere would be able to see the sun no matter. the weather. Since they only have one shot at this every 18 months or so, they can't leave anything up to chance. And this team chases eclipses for science, but of course they also do it because they love it. My favorite eclipse so far that I've seen was 2017, and I saw the corona

stretching across the sky, and I had this really profound moment of feeling like I was in the solar system. I could really see it all laid out before me, and it was no longer some abstract idea that some school teacher draws on a blackboard and says, this is how it is. And you go, okay, sure, it was there. It was just, it was this very powerful emotional moment. Even I'm getting emotional thinking about it. For some team members, this would be their first eclipse. I talked to one researcher who'd just flown in from Hawaii.

Being from Hawaii, you're kind of always surrounded by astronomy. It's kind of just like deeply rooted in our culture. She had some nerves leading up to this. This day had been on her calendar for so long, and it would all come down to a few critical minutes of science. I'm in charge of the computers for this telescope here, and since it'll be my first eclipse, I'm really worried

that I'll start crying and won't be able to press the right buttons, but I'm sure it'll be okay. I'm sure it will. I'm sure it'll be fine. And just before I left, the clouds cleared a bit, and the team jumped into action, calibrating their instruments.

We might have just lucked out right now. No, I'm going to put these on here, but I need to know when those are done. I made myself scarce and let them work. I want that hole right there. Why can't that just be over us all day? So where did you go next? Then I headed from this ranch over the rolling hills and into the town of Kerrville to Shriner University to meet another scientist.

Stairs and me have an interesting relationship now. This is where Shriner put us up for four nights. Not a bad. Not at all. Not a bad spot. Not at all. He was staying at a little cabin behind an observatory. Well, my name is Alan Hale.

Most people know me or know my name, at least, because of a certain bright comet that was in the sky a quarter century ago. That time has long gone. Alan Hale, the Alan Hale, who co-discovered Comet Hale-Bopp? He's pretty famous. Yeah, exactly. And that's a good story. So he got into comets as a kid.

He's observed some 700 comets throughout his life. And when he was younger, he was putting in hundreds of hours trying to discover a comet on his own, just scanning the sky every night. Then he gave it up until one night in 1995, when he started looking again on a whim. It's gorgeous night. I mean, I'm at 7,000 feet. No light pollution. I'm going to just kill some time by looking at some objects in the sky. So I turned my telescope to a globular star cluster in Sagittarius, known as an M70.

I noticed something right next to it immediately. It was a brand new comet. One of my favorite quotes is from Isaac Asimov. The most exciting phrase to hear in science is not Eureka. I found it, but that's funny. Alan got to name it, and when it got closer to the sun, it turned out to be super bright. There's this comet scientist saying, bet on a horse, not on a comet.

They're unpredictable, they can fizzle out or explode or just end up being very dim. Well, it's a good thing Alan bet on that comment because everybody could see it, and discovering it changed his life. It made my life very interesting for... I bet. For quite a while. I mean, it got to the point where I, we turned the ringers off all the phones in the house. He met the vice president. He was on the Today Show, flying city to city and meeting astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Star Trek stars like Patrick Stewart. Hail Bob really launched his career. Well, I mean, lots of people discover comics but discovering something like that

that even to this day has probably been seen by more people than any comet in history. But now, that was 25 years ago, now I'm a question on Jeopardy. Now things are different. Most comments get discovered by automatic survey programs,

not by eye from backyard telescopes or by folks like Allen scanning the skies. But he hasn't given up and he was here to do something pretty unique. to try to spot a sun-grazing comet from the ground during an eclipse. Sungrazers are those comets that we heard about earlier in the series, the ones that the Soho Observatory in Space can spot. So Alan was trying to see one from the ground.

Yeah, exactly. He was working pretty closely with Carl Battams, the scientist who runs the Sungrazer Citizen Science Project that we talked to earlier in our series. He had orbital experts lined up to measure the positions and tell Alan where to point his telescope. This is important research because we don't have that many good ground observations of sun grazers to calibrate Soho's detections from space.

Plus, I just think it would be cool to see a common here to tell. He'd been trying since the 70s, and he hadn't found one yet. The timing has never worked. The timing has to be almost perfect. We have to have a sungrazer appear so that it's bright and close to the sun during totality, and then they move in, they disintegrate. So there's a very narrow window when one of these is visible and it just has never worked. So this sounds like a long shot.

Yeah, it definitely was, but Alan saw this as his last best chance. He's getting older and doesn't travel much. And of course, the next eclipse in the U.S. is decades away. So I wished him luck and headed out. Wow, it's pretty cool to know that while everybody was looking up at the sun and moon during the eclipse, there were all these scientists looking up too and trying to discuss. So we've got these scientists, they're all ready to go. And on the actual eclipse day, Christian, I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I know that

you made a last minute change in your plants. Yeah, so funny story. You know how earlier in this series, Fred Espinack, aka Mr. Eclipse, he said that to be an Eclipse day, you have to be ready to drive hours right before the eclipse to run from bad weather. It's April 8th, about 6 a.m., the day of the eclipse. There has been a change of plans. Well, the weather forecast was looking pretty stormy in Curveville for Eclipse Day,

so I made a rash decision. Late last night, drove up to Dallas from Curveville, which was five hours, and got up here pretty late, and just met up with the NASA broadcast team here in Dallas at the Dallas Arboretum. I feel like a true eclipse chaser now. And I was just one thread of this story. NASA had hundreds of scientists and communication staff spread across the country in 14 locations we were calling sunspots. And so we're about to hear dispatches from the path of totality.

And why don't we start with you, Jacob? While I was dodging leaf blowers in the early morning at the Arboretum in Dallas, you were on your way to totality too, right? I was. I ended up in Paris. Paris, Arkansas. It's a town of 3,000 some people, the city of lights, but smaller, and for the eclipse, they were prepared for at least that many visitors.

Paris is a couple of hours from where I grew up, so I drove there with my dad and some other family, which was really special. We strolled around the little downtown area. You know, it's one of those picturesque town squares that's got a county courthouse in the middle, and then surrounded by stores and restaurants, and they have fun with the name Paris. Okay, Dad. Uh-oh.

Talk to me. Where are we and what's going on? So we are standing right next to the Eiffel Tower replica, all 12 feet of it. It could have been there first. I mean, we don't know. Well, that's true. That's entirely possible that Paris, France borrowed the idea from Paris, Arkansas, but placing no bets. And the skies are looking very favorable, high clouds. There's even a pancake breakfast on the other side of the square for those that are needing to satisfy our breakfast hunger?

Well, a few hundred miles northeast of you, my parents were doing just that. It's 7.30 on Monday morning, Eclipse Day. We're in Mary Lou's Cafe. The eggs are sizzling on the grill. Biscuits and gravy are in high demand. You can smell the coffee. And the waitress is peddling Eclipse shirts

along with your coffee, pancakes, and orange juice. They'd listened to our Sun series, and they'd gotten really excited about the eclipse as we covered it. And so they decided to drive six hours south to Carbondale, Illinois, to be in the path of totality. And so I deputized them as honorary field reporters for the day. Christian, tell your folks that they are naturals on the radio. I will say where I was, we also had good t-shirts.

I brought one home that said, I got mooned in Paris, Arkansas. That's a good one. I got one that looks like a band tour shirt, and it lists all the cities in totality. I have that same t-shirt. It glows in the dark, if you don't know. Ooh. I didn't realize that until I, like, wore his pajamas one night.

I was like, whoa. I will also say where I was, there was music, there were food trucks, just a super festive vibe all around. It was a party. Even the great folks of Paris put up. little flags commemorating the event for the total eclipse on their landposts all throughout the square. So the town is all in on the event.

And it's a lot of fun to see and growing excitement as we get closer. Yeah, it was the same in Carbondale at Southern Illinois University's Saluki Stadium. It's 830 and we've just arrived at the stadium at Southern Illinois University. There's a lot of decorated vehicles here. The one right next to me says, a future NASA employee. Totality or a bust. Okay, this is so cool. We've got Arkansas, Illinois, Texas.

That's where I was in the Cotton Bowl, with a science-themed vibe with Noah and NASA, talking to lots of families and kids. It was very exciting. Did we have anyone else out in the field? Yeah, NASA held events all across the path of totality. Miles Hatfield was at the one that I personally had the most fomo about. He's a writer on our Sun Science team,

and he was watching the eclipse from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500. 1115, a little under four hours until totality reaches Indianapolis, and this place is jamming. Okay, they're about to do a lap. I haven't gotten no final numbers, but the last estimate was something like 50,000 people were going to be here. And it is so wild because, you know, people are filling up the stands. and it's all about looking up at the sun.

It's like this huge sporting event that's just happening in the cosmos. It's really cool to look at. It was also a sports event atmosphere in Illinois where my parents were. It's a gorgeous day. The sun is shining. Birds are chirping in the trees. Crowds have just entered the stadium within the last 15 minutes. The stage is set up.

There'll be lots of presentations. NASA has a presence here, and we're all very excited for the upcoming eclipse. And as people started to flood into all these NASA events, Jacob and I started talking with folks. Just like us, they had spent many hours in the car to get to totality. How far of a drive is that? Seven hours? Seven hours?

So it's a six-hour drive. So it's an easy decision. And I drove all away from Virginia Beach. So 11-hour drive, stopping a couple of times. Where I was, there was a map of the U.S. where people could mark where they came from. There were dots all over the country and some from even farther away. But I just think it's fascinating that so many people, I mean, look at the map of where people came from. You know, it's just fantastic.

We have two friends in from Germany. Just visiting friends and secondly for the eclipse. Sweden. We have from France. There was Sweden, the Czech Republic. They're from. Okay. Hey, well, you get the most frequent flyer miles, I guess.

Also lives in Prague, but a Slovak citizen. Cool. So, had many of these people seen an eclipse before? Yeah, a couple. We ran into some old timers, but mostly it was a lot of first timers. And I have to say, everyone I talked to knew a lot about eclipses, like much more than I knew before we started making this series. I had the same impression.

So in Paris, I met some younger space explorers. Apparently a local news outlet was sponsoring a costume contest. I saw one teenager with a homemade half-moon, half-sun outfit. She had painted her face half and half, too. And there were even younger kids in snazzy astronaut costumes, right down to the NASA patch on the chest. Tell me about what's going to happen today. Like, what have you heard?

I've heard that there's going to be an eclipse today. And what does that mean? It means the moon goes in front of the sun. And are you excited for that? Yes, very excited. Why? Because it's going to be all dark. Yeah?

and it's probably my first time seeing it. Yeah, it's my first time, too. I met a few well-informed kids, too. Natsa. I love that one. Yeah, he wants to be a little astronaut, so it's perfect for me. What do you think is going to happen when the eclipse happens? I don't know what it will happen if the birds will go wild. Yeah, and also there's going to be blackout.

So why did you dress up in your astronaut? uniform today? Because I'm going to go to the moon. You're going to the moon? No way. When? Tomorrow. That sounds great.

Can I come with you? Yes. A lot of people I met had been aware of the eclipse for months or even years. And they knew exactly what to expect, the change in temperature, the strange animal behavior. I didn't notice anybody looking at the sun without eclipse glasses, which really warmed my heart. I was just impressed by how ready people were to soak it all in. Well, I've heard that. that from NASA, you know. It says that it's going to get dark and stuff like that.

You know, from what I hear, and you probably know more about it than I do, that the temperature's going to change about 20 degrees if you're wearing green and red, that that, you know, color will look different to you. It freaks out the bees, it freaks out the birds, it freaks out. I'm just looking forward to seeing like the magic everyone talks about. I don't know, just like the energy of this eclipse, I feel like I could benefit from it, whatever I think, you know, just to have some quiet, have all the lights out and experience it with all these other people. And, you know, I'm really excited to hear the ooze and the aaws. And that's, that's the thing I'm looking forward to most. And it sounds like it was clear where you were, Jacob,

but I got to say, I was running from clouds already by going to Dallas. And then that morning, it was still not looking good. The clouds just kept coming in more and more, and people were stressing about it. It really was stressful because so many people were trying to make that last minute decision, should I stay or should I go? I'm sure someone around here somewhere will get a good look. I'm really hoping it's up. Right. It may be a mile

over it, maybe right here. It's just where the cumulus clouds end up, right? It took a couple of hours for the moon to move over the sun, and anytime there was a gap in the clouds, everyone would look up with their glasses on. I know, it's really up. If the sky stays

this way, I will thank NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center. So we were busy talking to folks finding these space nerds out in the wild. And then everybody settled down to just experience totality in Dallas, Paris, in Carbondale and Indianapolis. And now we'll let the experience speak for itself, the eclipse through the eyes and ears of NASA. Time is now 254. We're a little over 10 minutes until the total solar eclipse. They've opened up the tracks so that people can stand on. on the Speedway and watch the Total Solar Eclipse.

We're here in Cleveland. We're just waiting for totality to hit. That's Stephen Logan, a producer at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. He agreed to record for us too. Everybody's gathered and waiting. The energy in the atmosphere is something I've never experienced before. It's starting to get chilly. And we're starting to count down here in a little bit for complete totality.

We are about five minutes from totality now here in Carbondale. There's 15,000 people in this stadium. Everybody's looking up. Everybody's still got their glasses on. Everybody's anticipating the moment when they can take them off. What are your thoughts at the moment, sorry? Which the clouds would move? Folks in Dallas had been stressing about the clouds,

And just before totality, as the moon covered up more and more of the sun, they cleared. You put your glasses on and look up again. We are eight minutes from totality. This morning, we promised you clear skies for totality. And you look, we're keeping it. We're keeping in here. They told us that the clouds would maybe go away. They did.

They went completely away, like around just where we're looking. All over, people felt the temperature drop, And the sky turns steely blue, and the colors change. And the horizon turn red, orange in all directions. Gosh, oh my gosh, it's suddenly getting dark, like, just much faster. Oh, my God, this is crazy. The lights are starting to flicker because they're not really sure if they should come on or off, but it's starting to get dark.

It's feeling a lot cooler. You're feeling a lot cooler? I am. This is great. Lost about 10 degrees. It's so much cooler. It almost feels like nighttime or evening. It's amazing how much cooler it's gotten already.

And they kept an eye out for animals acting strangely. We're, I think, four or five minutes away from totality. It's definitely darker. It's definitely cooler. Animals are moving around. I think all the people are sitting still watching and getting ready. There goes a grackle. There's a good one.

Maybe he's going to bed. Oh, he's just perched to the top of the tree to better see the eclipse, I think. He's got a good view. It's now three o'clock. We're out on the track. People are sitting down, laying down with their families. There are thousands of people out here. And it's so cool.

Everyone is just looking up. About three minutes away from Titala. Only a sliver. The sun is left. Everybody is kind of just staring up, waiting for it to take over here. People are starting to get quiet. Just a teeny, teeny, teeny tiny, little sliver. I'm not looking at my watch, but the sun is just a really strong.

It's just a really small sliver. I think it must be Bailey's beads soon. Oh, it's just a tiny sliver now. And then, the moon fully and perfectly eclips the sun. Whoa. Oh, this is crazy. Blocking the photosphere, flunging the world into darkness for up to four and a half minutes, depending on where you were in the path of totality.

And there's not much you can do except sheer. This is crazy. Look at the roof. Yeah, your eclipse glasses don't work. Your eclipse glasses don't work anymore. You can look with your eyes. You can look at it without. Wow.

I know. Yeah, yeah. This is as if it's 8 o'clock at night. It's the corona. It's the outer roller that you can't see normally. Oh. I can see the chromosphere. I can see a bright red spot peeking out from around the corona.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Is there somebody going on? The blue cover of the sun. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Is it how it done?

This is truly almost a spiritual experience. This is next level, something I've never had the privilege to be a part of, and something I definitely will never forget. And then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The sun came back, like a dimmer switch had been pushed back up. Here we go. The sun's starting to come back out. Lights started to pick back up.

It looks like a sliver of half. fire coming back to the sky. You'll see the sun beginning to illusion from the other side of the location people cheered again like they were welcoming the sun back. Wow, yeah, we'll be out. They're going to come home really, really fast. Now it's just light again? It's like somebody just turned on the lights again.

It's so wild. Thank you to the weather, whoever was responsible for that. responsible for this. But he's so excited. There's so much nervous energy. Everybody's like jumping around. Oh, wow. Well, I gotta say, I've been writing about the sun since 2017.

This is my first eclipse, and now I see what all the fuss is about. Wow. It was like nothing I have ever seen. It was unreal. It's kind of hard to describe. So Jacob and Miles and Stephen and I, we all tried to get folks to do our job for us. Medea, right? Yes.

Can I bother you again? Oh, my gosh, of course. I just want to know what you thought. That was probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. Like, loved it. I've got to ask you guys since I've found you again. Yeah. How was it?

Oh, my God, that was insane. It was insane. I have no words. I mean, I'm just still in shock. It should have been longer. The universe should have made it wrong. All right, Dad. Last time I'm going to bother you, I promise.

What did you think? Absolutely spectacular to see in person. And just the photos that we've all seen all our lives just don't do it justice to being there in person. But great cooperation from Mother Nature. Just a few high clouds that did not interfere to the naked eye viewing. And really just really neat. Get another chance in maybe 20 years apparently. But not banking on it being as good as this.

This was awesome. I thought so too. Thanks, Paris From Paris with love From Paris with love Christian After listening back I think that both of our parents

were sold on eclipses after this Yeah, I am too You know, we kept getting told That the first thing you say after totality is where's the next one And I am feeling that Looking at maybe Spain in 2026 Just seems like waiting until 2044

Would be way too long An eclipse chaser is born. Christian, I have to ask, you lucked out with the weather. But how were things in Kerrville? Did you make the right call? Yeah, I heard from Ben and Alan afterward. Unfortunately, it did stay clouded over there, so Ben's team couldn't get data.

And although there was a sungrazer spotted during the eclipse, Alan didn't get to see it. Hopefully he'll get another chance. But there was some good news for scientists. NASA is still coming through all the data we collected during the eclipse, but we know the research planes and sounding rockets all got clear views of the sun. So there should be plenty to study. And citizen science was a huge success for this eclipse.

A project called Sun-Sketcher collected photos of Bailey's beads from 32,000 cell phones during totality, which will help scientists calculate the sun's size and shape with more accuracy than ever before. And the Eclipse Soundscapes team received recordings of habitats from 700 audio moth devices set up by citizen scientists across the country, which is way more than the team was expecting. And another 7,000 people sent them observations. What a unifying experience to know that millions of people are stopping what they do on an

ordinary day and looking up to watch this amazing, coincidental, beautiful cosmic experience together. Totally. You know guys, I felt a lot of camaraderie just sitting on some concrete steps with a bunch of strangers all looking up into the sky together. And I would like it if we could all do that more often. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you, Christian. Yeah, thank you, Patty. I'm so glad I got to see the eclipse. Of course. It was so much fun. And thank you for listening to our Sun series. Although the eclipse is over, the sun definitely isn't going anywhere. And neither are we. We'll be back in your

feed soon with more stories from NASA and across our wild and wonderful universe. This is NASA's Curious Universe. This episode was written and produced by Christian Elliott. Our executive producer is Katie Conan's. The Curious Universe team includes Jacob Pinter, Julia Tilton, Maddie Olson, and Michaela Sosby. Christopher Kim is our amazing show artist. Our theme song was composed by the creative Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguit of System Sounds. Special thanks to our Eclipse field correspondence, Miles Hatfield, Stephen Logan, and especially Lori Elliott, who really has a future in this business. Thanks also to the NASA Heliophysics Team for working with us throughout this Sun series

and as always we are so grateful to you for listening and just for being a space nerd. If you enjoyed this episode of NASA's Curious Universe, please let us know by leaving us a review and sharing the show with a friend. And remember, you can follow NASA's Curious Universe in your favorite podcast app to get a notification each time we post a new episode.

You know, once I took my shoes off to go into the telescope tent, everybody wanted to talk to the guy with the NASA logo socks. Spiders everywhere. Nice socks. Thanks. Love it. Representing, yeah.

My name's Christian. Christian, nice to meet you. NASA Goddard. Yes, I love your NASA. You have the NASA socks? I got the NASA socks. I love it. I got the NASA socks.

He's taking pictures of your socks. Oh. Three, two, one. This is an official NASA podcast.