NASA's Curious Universe - Sun Series: How to Experience a Total Solar Eclipse

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

On April 8, 2024, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun, casting a shadow across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Total solar eclipses have fascinated human beings for thousands of years. Watching the Moon eclipse the Sun is a surreal, multi-sensory experience that you’re not likely to forget. But Eclipses also offer unique opportunities for NASA to study the relationship between our star and home planet. Join current and former NASA sun scientists Kelly Korreck, Fred “Mr. Eclipse” Espenak and Cherilynn Morrow on a journey through time and space to solve eclipse mysteries.

Have you ever experienced a total solar eclipse? It's this strange, magical, somewhat unsettling moment when in the middle of the day, the world suddenly goes dark as the moon blocks out the sun. The first eclipse I saw was back in the early 1960s. And I was only, let's see, that would have made me 11 years old. My first total solar eclipse was in 2017, and I had the privilege of being on the USS Yorktown in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. That's Fred Espinack and Kelly Corrick.

Kelly is a NASA sun scientist who studies total solar eclipses and Fred's an eclipse addict. He's earned his nickname, Mr. Eclipse, by experiencing 30 of them all over the world. Now the odds that you, listening to this episode, are currently experiencing a total solar eclipse are pretty low. They're rare phenomena. In any given place, where you live, for example, you'll only get about one every four centuries. So I'm not going to get in the way here. I'm going to let Kelly and Fred tell you what experiencing one firsthand is like. And leading up here, this is actually a really kind of eerie scene.

You start to notice that the quality of light now is, starting to look a little odd. The light seems weird, and your brain definitely starts thinking, something doesn't seem right. So there's this feeling of kind of anxiety yet also excitement. The sun is no longer a disc in the sky. It's a thin crescent. And on the ground underneath a shade tree,

you'll see the ground covered with little crescent suns. It's an amazing thing. And the first part that happens is Bailey's beads. So you see these bright little lights. There are the sun's rays coming through the mountains and valleys on the moon? We forget that the sun is what's giving us warmth. But in the last 10 minutes, when you've got over 90% of the sun covered, the temperature is going to start to drop.

My reaction physiologically is that the hair on the back of my neck is standing up, my heart is racing, and you just get a visceral feeling in your gut that something is wrong. This just does not seem natural. It seems so far out of any kind of everyday experience. What does happen in general in eclipses is that animals think it's nighttime. So animals such as crickets, roosters, you know, think it's nighttime, it's time to roost. You've got birds around, they might start singing their evening songs because they think it's sunset.

It's getting dark out for them. So you're seeing these light beads all along the side of the dark moon. that's covering the bright sun. And then you see one final one, which is called the diamond ring, and you see totality. And in the last few seconds, the moon shadow races over you, and it's traveling over a thousand miles an hour. You don't see the edge of the shadow. Either you're in it or you're out of it.

It just sweeps over you so rapidly. You're plunged into it, and suddenly daylight drops to an eerie twilight, about as dark as it gets, maybe about a half hour after sunset. And when you look out in the directions of the horizon, you're looking at the edge of the shadow into areas that are still in daylight. So you look around the horizon and you're surrounded by sort of a 360 degree sunrise

in all directions, sunrise and sunset. And of course, then you look back up at the sky to where the sun had been, and there's no brilliant sun in the sky anymore. What it's been replaced by is a black disc surrounded by this eerie gossamer halo, which is the sun's corona. At this time, you don't need your special glasses. You can look with your own eyes at the protrusions from the sun,

which are filaments, there are millions of degrees of hot gas that are flowing off the sun. And it's indescribable. It's so beautiful. The shape of it is always different at each eclipse because it's affected by the magnetic fields of the sun, which are changing from day to day. And it was breathtaking. The things that I had studied my entire career were there right in front of my eyes. And they had been hidden by the brightness that the sun normally has.

And so I was with friends and there was much laughter and hugging and just overall an amazing experience. Wow. That looks great. Even though most total eclipses last two or three minutes, all of them seem to last only a few seconds subjectively because this happens so quickly because now you're outside the moon's shadow again and you plunged right back into bright sunlight. The shadow races off across the earth's surface and leaves you, you got another hour or so of partial phases.

But you've just experienced the total eclipse. Everyone who experiences a total solar eclipse seems to come away with the same question. For most people, the first question on their mind is, When's the next one? When did we get to do that again? Because I want to see it. Because it is just such an amazing experience.

This is NASA's curious universe. Our universe is a wild and wonderful place. I'm your host, Patty Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide. Welcome to the second episode of our Sun series. It's a big year for Arnear's star. We're near solar maximum when the sun is at its most active and explosive. And NASA's Parker Solar Probe is going to make its closest approach to our star flying through its atmosphere.

So in our star's honor, we're taking a deep five-part dive into the plasma. If you missed our first episode, you might want to go back and check that one out too. At the time of this recording, there's a time of this recording, there's a total solar eclipse on the horizon in North America. On April 8th, 2024, the moon will pass directly between the sun and earth, totally blocking its light for several minutes, along a path stretching from Mexico to Canada. And since our sun's atmosphere, the corona is particularly active right now, scientists are expecting a pretty stellar show.

We've got about two minutes here, folks. As you can hear, the crowd is chanting in counting. down until our moment right now. Roughly 32 million people living in the path of totality, locations where the moon will completely cover the sun, will get to experience a total solar eclipse. And 99% of Americans will experience at least a partial eclipse. Wait, one more minute, folks.

But if you live elsewhere in the world, don't tune out. Wherever you are on Earth, chances are there will be a total solar eclipse somewhere near you, near you at some point within your lifetime, and you won't want to miss it. When the sun and moon, the two most important celestial objects in our sky, align perfectly to cast a shadow right on us, it'll be a reminder like no other of our place in the solar system, on a little wall of rock in the vastness of space. Gina, I thought I'd have goosebumps, but I'm literally shaking. This is great.

I know. I know. I agree. So in this second episode, we'll learn all about eclipses. The science behind this cosmic coincidence? What drives umberphiles, also known as eclipse chasers, to chase totality all over the world, how indigenous Americans a thousand years ago studied and respected the sun and the moon during eclipse.

And the unique NASA research that can only happen during the few short minutes when everything aligns. Oh, and we might just solve a mystery, one that has to do with tree rings, bowls, spacecraft, and ancient petroglyphs carved into a desert rock. An eclipse is all about being at the right place at the right time and things literally aligning just with you. That's Kelly again. She's a NASA sun scientist, a heliophysicist, and she's also the program manager for the

2024 eclipse. So what we're talking about aligning here is the moon, the science. and the Earth. And depending on which order they're in, you're going to either block out the Sun or block out the Moon. When things align differently, so the Earth casts its shadow on the Moon, that's a lunar eclipse. But what's happening on April 8th is rarer, a solar eclipse. So that means the Sun is out front, the Moon is in the middle, and it's blocking out the Sun to the Earth's vantage point. And it doesn't happen everywhere on Earth. It's a very special path that you actually can

see the moon completely blacking out the sun. On a map, that path looks like a long curved stripe that the circular shadow of the moon travels along as the eclipse swoops across Earth's surface. The path of totality or that path where you're going to see that total eclipse is really narrow, because actually the moon shadow is very narrow. The moon is very small compared to the earth and compared to the sun. It just happens to be just far enough away at the right size to actually block out the sun. That we have total solar eclipses at all is something of a cosmic coincidence. Not every planet with a moon has eclipses like ours. The sun is way bigger, 400 times wider than the moon. But the moon can fully block its light because it also happens to be

400 times closer to us than the sun. So to us here on Earth, they look exactly the same size. And of course, to experience an eclipse, not only do you have to have a lot. to be in exactly the right place, the path of totality. You also have to be there at just the right time. The eclipses only happen every so often or about every 18 months somewhere on Earth. That's because the moon's orbit is slightly tilted. It doesn't always perfectly line up with the sun and Earth. But while it takes centuries on average for an eclipse to repeat in a given place, they're happening fairly often somewhere on Earth. So if you miss the total solar eclipse in North America this April, not to worry. You can catch the next one in Europe in

26, in Africa in 27, in Australia in 28, and so on for at least the next few million years. It's an eclipse world tour. But that also means when there's an eclipse in your neighborhood and you don't have to voyage halfway around the planet to see it, it's pretty special. And experiencing it is even more special. as it's a celestial event and it's a date and it's a time, it's a full experience. It's really a full-body, inspirational, almost spiritual experience to see this eclipse. Soaking up that cosmic dance firsthand can be transformative, so much so that some people get hooked. Eclipse chasers go all over the world in search of these eclipses. And actually we know very well that where they're going to be.

so for the next about 5,000 years, so we can plan our travel accordingly. Since they happen somewhere on Earth every 18 months or so, as an eclipse chaser, you can experience quite a few eclipses in a lifetime, if you're willing to do some serious travel, that is. And some folks are more than willing, those eclipse chasers, or as they're sometimes called, umbraphiles, lovers of shadow. Mr. Eclipse, Fred Espenek, is one of them. For him, part of the fun of eclipses is mathematical.

He likes to make his own predictions about where they'll happen next. But on a more visceral gut-wrenching appeal, it is simply the most incredible celestial event you can see. And you don't need a Hubble Space Telescope. All you've got to do is be able to get into the path of the eclipse and be there on the right day and the right time and have some luck with the weather to see this event. Fred is a retired NASA astronomer.

Now he lives out in the Arizona desert with his telescopes. I built one observatory, and it got so crowded, I had so many telescopes, I had to build the second one. So I've got two now. The skies out here are absolutely beautiful. I lose a lot of sleep. He started working at NASA in 1976 the week the Viking spacecraft landed on Mars. It wasn't Fred's main job, but he quickly got into making eclipse predictions, which isn't an easy thing to do. The first component is you've got to have a good model for, it's called an ephemorous.

It basically, it's a mathematical model that describes where the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun are in space with respect to each other. With that ephemorous, you know when an eclipse will happen. But to figure out where it'll happen, you have to model how the Moon's shadow moves. You've got a shadow moving over a curved surface that's not perfectly circular either. you have to take into account the fact that the Earth's shape is an oblate spheroid. It's sort of a little squashed sphere a little bit. And you have to take that small effect into account and the speed of the shadow and how rapidly it moves across the Earth's surface.

A lot of mathematics, a lot of modeling on the computer. Fred is far from the first person to predict future eclipses. Humans have been doing that for at least the last 3,000 years, just by keeping track of the moon and sun's position in the sky. Then they got a lot more accurate. In the 1700s, Edmund Halley, yes, the same guy the famous comet is named after, made the first models of how the moon's shadow moves across the earth during eclipses. And he asked regular people across England to time the eclipse, using the grandfather clocks in their homes.

Suddenly, we could predict both when and where eclipses would happen with precision. Here at NASA, a couple of centuries later, Fred got so into predicting eclipses like Halley and generations of people before him, that he earned his nickname. And I guess one time somebody introduced me as Mr. Eclipse, because I was developing a reputation for lecturing on Eclipse and photographing Eclipse's and talking about Eclipse.

So that name just sort of stuck. But Mr. Eclipse's total obsession with totality started long before he joined NASA, back when he saw that first eclipse in the 1960s as an 11-year-old. And I had... had a small amateur telescope, a department store telescope that my parents had got me a year or two earlier. And I was very excited about the upcoming eclipse. And I was visiting my grandparents in southern New York at their summer home.

And from where I was located, it was only a partial eclipse. Looking up through his little telescope, Fred was mesmerized. But the thing is, a partial eclipse is an end. anything like a total eclipse. The way Fred puts it, a partial eclipse is certainly like getting five out of the six numbers in the lottery.

You almost won, but basically you lost. If you don't get all six numbers, six numbers is the total eclipse. Five numbers is a partial. There's no comparison. One's a loser and one's a winner. He's thought a lot about this. A partial eclipse is like

having a tailgate party in the parking lot during the Super Bowl. So, after watching the partial eclipse from his grandparents' house, Fred decided he had to see a total eclipse. But there was a problem. The next one on the continent was in 1970, almost a decade away. So as an 11-year-old, he put it on his calendar. After years of waiting, the day finally arrived. By then, Fred had a driver's license. He was a senior in high school. I can miss my parents to let me. bar of the family car, unschaperoned, and drive 600 miles south to get into the path of this

total eclipse. And I've been planning this thing for seven years. I had read lots of books and magazine articles about it. I had my little telescope with me with a camera hooked up to it now. I was going to try to take pictures of this event. And I managed to get a couple of pictures, but I was absolutely dumbfounded by the event. It was so spectacular, so incredible. So incredible. So so far beyond anything I possibly could have imagined. As Fred drove to the eclipse, he had accepted that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But after he saw it, he had to see the next one. So initially I thought this was my one chance.

After this was over, I knew I had to see another eclipse. One was not enough, that three minutes went by so quickly, and there was so much to see, and it was so exquisitely beautiful. The next one in the U.S. wouldn't happen for 20, 21 years in 1991. But there would be one in Canada in 1972. Well, that was only a thousand miles to drive to. I could get to that.

After the eclipse in Canada that year, 1991 still seemed like far too long to wait. So he looked for the next eclipse. The next one after 72 was in 1973. Now this was a little more challenging because this one was in the Sahara Desert in northern Africa. As you might have guessed, he made it there. He made it there.

And that was just the beginning. At some point, once you start chasing eclipses, it gets hard to stop. That was just the start of a, you might say, a lifelong addiction of chasing total eclipses all over the world. So by this point, over the past 50, 53, 54 years, I've been to 30 total eclipses of the Sun, and I've seen a total eclipse on every continent, including Antarctica. including Antarctica.

So it's taken me all over the world. Unusual places like the Altiplano of Bolivia, or the desert in Mongolia, or East Africa with wild animals and spectacular wildlife. Not every eclipse has been spectacular. Some have been frustrating, ruined by cloudy skies, an eclipse chasers' worst nightmare. As an eclipse chaser, you're always worried about the weather.

You can predict exactly where and when a total eclipse is going to be, when it's going to start, when the total phase will begin, exactly how many seconds of totality you're going to get. All these things can be predicted years in advance, but you can't predict the weather tomorrow. But Fred does get asked a lot. Does he have a favorite? The funny thing about that question is, is occasionally my wife Pat will go to some of my lectures with me. And she noticed that I was answering that question wrong when I told people what my favorite eclipse was. She had to remind me that my favorite eclipse was the one where the two of us met. That was almost 30 years ago, halfway around the world in India. We were both on the same eclipse trip together.

Sparks flew, and eventually we got married. And she's been a traveling companion to most of my eclipse. since then. It's hard to describe what's so special about eclipses to someone who hasn't experienced one before, but there's just something about how it's both predictable, routine, and inevitable for earth and humanity in general and so profoundly affecting to actually witness in person. No matter what mankind does, there's nothing we can do to change or impede or affect in any way the eclipse.

It's going to happen at a certain time and at a certain place. inevitability of it. And it gives you a sense of perspective of how small and insignificant we are in the universe. And yet at the same time, we're a piece of it. We're an integral part of it. So it's an interesting effect to experience a total eclipse. And it's a humbling experience, I think. And for the April 2024 eclipse, Fred's plans are made. He's going down to Mexico, where he's crossing his fingers for clear skies and getting ready. to add another eclipse to his collection. Eclipse are an incredible experience, but for NASA, they're also really important opportunities

for science. For centuries, we've looked up at the sky with big questions, and eclipses have repeatedly given us the answers during experiments that are only possible during the few moments of totality. Here's Kelly again. The eclipses are special for science because they set up the right conditions in our laboratory of the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. So for instance, Einstein's theory of relativity was actually proven during an eclipse.

After Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915, scientists big question was whether he was right about gravity's power to affect space and time, warping light around stars. After four years of waiting for a solar eclipse to dim the sun enough to look, they proved him Right. Today, our big question is about the sun itself. Why its atmosphere the corona is so much hotter, millions of degrees hotter, than its surface. Scientists are studying the sun all the time, using lots of tools in spacecraft, but they're particularly excited about the upcoming eclipse.

Without an eclipse, it's pretty hard to see and study the corona from here on Earth, because the surface, the photosphere, is a million times brighter. It's like trying to take a picture of a light bulb. It's really hard to see anything else around it because it's the brightest thing in a picture. So when you block out the sun, that middle part that's super bright, you're able to look at the outside. We have spacecraft and telescopes that block out the sun, creating an artificial eclipse so scientists can look at the corona

through the instrument's eyes. But they're not nearly as good at the job as our own moon is. So here at NASA, every eclipse is an opportunity, the sun being blocked by our moon offers scientists a few precious moments to study the faint corona of our star. And those moments of totality are so precious that heliophysicists have a trick up their sleeves to get the most out of that very limited time, using a fancy high-flying plane called a WB57. So this eclipse is going to be around four, four and a half minutes of time.

So that sounds really short. But clever scientists have figured out how to extend that a little by using the WB57 airplane and putting their instruments aboard that and flying along the path so they don't get a lot more time, but they get a little bit more time to make observations and get that important data during the eclipse. By flying really fast and high up in the Earth's atmosphere during the eclipse, they can get about 10 to 20 seconds more out of totality than you can on the ground. It's not that long because the shadow is moving much faster than an airplane can fly,

but every moment counts. Eclipse has happened as long as humans have lived on Earth, and much longer than that. And beyond being unique opportunities for eclipse chasers to experience and scientists to study, the alignment of our Earth, sun, and moon, provides a unique opportunity to connect across time and space with sun gazers past and present. And even, maybe, make new discoveries.

in the process. All of our ancestors, not just in the southwest, but you and I have sun-watching ancestors. All of your listeners have people in their history and their ancestry who learn to live well and in harmony with the cycles of the sun. So the seasonal cycles of the sun, they used to learn where the sun rises and sets

on a horizon to track time and to, ah, this time for the winter, winter ceremony, time to prepare for harvesting, time to prepare for planting. for planting. You learn to live in harmony with the seasonal cycle of the sun. We wouldn't be here if our ancestors didn't figure that out. That's Sherilyn Morrow, astrophysicist and outreach director of NASA's Punch Mission. I like to introduce myself these days as saying I was solar physicist by brain, by mind and training, and I'm an educator at heart, and I am a singer,

songwriter by soul. Sherilyn grew up wanting to become an astronaut. She became a pilot and then an astrophysicist. Then she realized that her true calling was connecting other people of all backgrounds and cultures to space and science through our sun. She never made it to the moon, but now she spends her time in a place she says

is nearly as otherworldly. It's a place called Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. The place where sun-watching on this continent began. Chaco Canyon captured my heart and my spirit of adventure. Chaco was like my moon. It's a very austere, high desert landscape, long horizons as far as you can see, which makes it very good for sun watching, and canyon walls, red rocks, low vegetation, juniper, salt bush, sage, pungent desert-like smells, very dry.

dry climate, very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. It's a very remote, challenging natural environment for anyone to live in. And yet, a thousand years ago, all roads in the region led to Chaco. There's evidence of ancient, thousand-year-old sun-watching throughout the southwest at Chaco culture sites like Mesa Verde, Bear's Ears, and Chimney Rock. But Chaco Canyon drew people from across the region. It was especially important. It's a world heritage site today, well known for its monumental sandstone buildings,

perfectly aligned to the cardinal directions. But the more scientists have studied Chaco, the more they've come to realize that the ancestral Puebloans, who once lived here, were watching the sky. If you look closely enough, you'll find spiral petroglyphs, rock art carved into cliff faces

that act as little stand-here signs. They indicate exactly the right spot to wait and look out at the horizon to see the sunshine through certain rock formations on the equinox and solstice. So when it was time to pick a place to focus outreach efforts for NASA's new punch mission, Sherilyn picked Chaco. So by focusing on Chaco, which is regionally important to the descendants of the people who built Chaco, yet it also is a World Heritage Site, we actually are able to connect with the cultures there. So we're in collaboration, right, with the ancestors of the

ancestral people who made Chaco come alive a thousand years ago. To Sherrillin, there's a direct line from the past inhabitants of Chaco, who studied the sun here to learn how to live within the seasons it controls, and NASA's own efforts to study the sun through missions like Punch. The Punch Mission consists of four suitcase-sized satellites that will fly through the space between the Sun and Earth to form a three-dimensional image of the incoming solar wind, data that could improve space weather forecasts beyond what we can do today. Punch is going to study the science of when does the sun's corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, right, that we see during a total solar eclipse,

when does that corona end and the solar wind stream begin? That region between the planets, that interplanetary space, When does the corona end and the solar wind begin? So just like the petroglyphs and calendar-like rock formations, the ancestors of today's Puebloans built here at Chaco, to understand and live within the earthly seasons our sun controls? The Punch Mission is going to play a role in learning to live well and in harmony with the sun's magnetic activity cycle.

That activity cycle and its storms affect our technological world. Our theme portrays NASA's exploration of the Sun, NASA heliophysics, as a natural extension of humans' long-lived inclination and dedication to studying the rhythms and mysteries of the Sun. Really, our ancestors got it started to learn how to live well with the Sun. And NASA exploration is just an ongoing contemporary way in which we do that. As Cheryl and dug in further at Chaco, she learned. about a particularly interesting connection to NASA's science at a site called Rock of the Sun. It was one of those rock carvings, a petroglyph, but one unlike any other she'd seen in Chaco Canyon. So this petroglyph is about hand size. If you, an adult person reaches their hand, spreads out their

thumb to pinky, that's about the size of the petroglyph, eight inches across. It's a circle, and it has curly-kew line. emanating from all around the petroglyph. And then up to the left, there's another pecking of a smaller circle. Those curly cue lines look suspiciously like a stormy solar corona, visible during an eclipse that coincides with solar maximum, like our 2024 eclipse will. Picture the scene. An ancestral Puebloan, nearly 500 years before the first Europeans set foot in New Mexico,

looking up at a darkening sky and a flaming, sun and creating a permanent record of what they saw. They may have even collaborated on it, like multiple people saw it, only for a few minutes during totality, and then collaborate it, what did you see? What did you see? And they collaborated on what would be represented in the stone. This is not the same as taking a picture. Your eyes are actually better at seeing the structures of the corona.

If you notice when you look and you perceive those structures raying out from the disc, in the sky, you take a picture and you'll get far less information. The Chaco inhabitants, looking up at a less polluted sky, would have been able to see the corona more clearly during their solar maximum eclipse than we'll be able to in 2024. But does the rock of the sun petroglyph really depict a stormy solar corona during an eclipse? Well, just like we can predict eclipse's thousands of years into the future, we can also accurately determine when they happened in the past.

So we do know there was an eclipse in 1097. We know that the 1097 eclipse path of totality included Chaco. So that's for sure. Through some wild science that involves tracking radiation from the sun recorded in tree rings, scientists determined that 1097 eclipse did happen during a period of high solar activity. And that means it was more likely that there would be solar storms. where that stuff coming off the sun can be exploded off out of the corona. These are the type of storms that Punch will monitor

from the time they leave the corona all the way to Earth orbit. Well, of course, we don't have punch in 1097, but what we have are naked eye observations by the people who were resident in Chaco. This was a time of high solar activity, but also high human activity in Chaco. This was a time when people were still building the monumental sandstone art.

architecture that we can see the remains of when we go there today. So the indigenous Chacoans really would have been looking up at a very active corona. But Sherilyn still has questions. We know that it was a stormy time of high maximum. Did the Choccoans witness some kind of kinks or curls or curves in the corona during totality? Just a few minutes of time. That's all you get. Did they witness something that they then recorded an important?

of in that rock art. We're very excited about that question and about how modern NASA spacecraft, like the solar and heliospheric observatory, Soho, who routinely measures the corona, or makes images of the solar corona, solar dynamics observatory. Other missions who are observing the corona, we can compare with that data that we didn't have before and see, wow, those features, do they line up, do they match up with what we now routinely observe in the corona? She hopes that by bringing together the petroglyph carving, some old drawings of eclipses from the 1800s,

choccoen pottery she came across with similar curly cue motifs and NASA imagery of the corona, she'll be able to narrow down how humans depict the corona during solar maximum in art. There's no way to know for sure. But one thing is certain. This petroglyph is pretty special. What we know from our cultural partners and the... the descendants with whom we're working, what we know is that whatever they saw, it was important to them. Or they wouldn't have taken the time and trouble to carve it into rock so beautifully

and so meticulously. There's no reason to think experiencing an eclipse in 1097 would be any less enchanting than it is today. The spectacle of the moon blocking out all of the light of the sun in the middle of the day is just transcending. Because of the moon, because of the moon, of the eerie lighting, the earthly existence becomes a bit surreal, and the celestial reality becomes very real. It's a lovely cosmic coincidence that we have this thing, a total solar eclipse from Earth. The most important point is that eclipses are this unique cosmic coincidence that we can experience here on Earth, and when we experience them, we can take a moment to think about our place in the universe and our place in human history.

When we come into contact with viewing the sun's corona, we can commune with the Chaconians across time, space, and culture. Connecting the ancestral people who witnessed this eclipse in 1097 and may have recorded it in their rock art to now where we can see an eclipse at a time of high solar activity. People screaming in the background. People are so excited. and connect it not only with them, but connect it with the NASA missions that are exploring. As you look up at the sun's stormy corona this year, revealed by the solar eclipse,

just like the Chacoans did almost a thousand years before you, think about how many people have done the same throughout history. And think about NASA's Parker solar probe flying through that corona that you can see with your own eyes for just a few minutes during totality. Take off your eclipse glasses safely, of course, and make sure you look at the shadows around you, look at how the environment has changed, just make note of this entire event. And in all that brief excitement, don't forget to take a moment to reflect on how many millions of other people are doing just what you're doing across the country,

looking out into the cosmos at a rare event that is beyond human existence, altogether at once. And I feel like that's a very unifying idea, that something, Something in the natural world is being offered that we can all, all of us, no matter where we are in the U.S. can connect to. This is a way in which we can feel the unity. Everybody in the 48 contiguous states can see at least a partial. We are all in this cosmos. We all belong to this cosmos in this universe.

This is our star, all of us, one sun. Wow, I've got goosebumps. I'm so, so excited to experience this eclipse myself. and I'm especially excited to share it with all of you. So, before we go, a quick word from the NASA astronauts of Expedition 69, Stephen Bowen, Woody Holberg, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al-Nietti. They just got back from the International Space Station, and they have a total solar eclipse safety message for us.

Let's take a listen. Hello, Eclipse fans. Expedition 69 here, and we're on a mission to get you all ready for the upcoming total eclipse. This is exciting and there's a lot to cover. If you are in the path of totality, everything will get dark, and you'll be in for the show of a lifetime. Expect lots of goosebumps. I'm sure everyone watching wants to know how to safely see it, right?

Here's the deal. The only time you can look at the total eclipse without eye protection is during a brief period of totality when the moon completely covers the sun. Ewing any part of the sun without protection, even for a short amount of time, can cause serious eye damage. Never look directly at the sun, sun without proper eye protection.

Sun glasses are not enough to shield your eyes from harmful solar rays. Use certified solar viewing glasses or handheld solar viewers to observe the eclipse. These specially designed glasses provide the necessary protection. If you want to use a telescope, binoculars, or camera to view the sun, you must place a safe solar filter on those two, except during totality. If you don't have eclipse classes, you can use an indirect viewing method like a pinhole protector. Make a small hole in a piece of cardboard or paper. Or use a colander. You can even use your hands.

Basically, use any holy object and cast a shadow on a nearby surface and check out the crescent shapes. If you're not lucky enough to be near the X-lips, maybe you're outside the U.S. You can still experience it all with NASA Live coverage on NASA Plus, April 8th from 1 to 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight time. That was a lot. Did we miss anything? I think that covers it. You can find all this information and more at Go dot NASA.gov slash eclipse 2024.

Happy viewing. 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, Maddie Olson, and Michaela Sosby. Christopher Kim is our show artist. Our theme song was composed by Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguita of System Sounds.

Special thanks to Marcellus Proctor, Julia Tilsby. Scott Swofford and NASA's Heliophysics team. 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.

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