Physics Today will have staff at five locations in the zone of totality as well as at our headquarters outside of Washington, DC.
After years of anticipation, it’s time for the Great American Eclipse. At about 10:15am Pacific time on 21 August, the Moon’s umbral shadow will make landfall in Oregon. From there it will dart southeast across the country, finally heading out into the Atlantic Ocean by around 11:50am Pacific (2:50pm Eastern). Only the areas in the shaded band on the map above will witness a total solar eclipse, but the whole country will enjoy a few hours of partial eclipse.
To chronicle this rare event, Physics Today editors are spread across the US, including in several spots along the zone of totality—Sun Valley, Idaho; Casper, Wyoming; Marion, Illinois; Paducah, Kentucky; and Knoxville, Tennessee. Check this page throughout the weekend and Monday for updates on viewing conditions, photos of local events, and interviews with scientists and eclipse enthusiasts. You can also follow us on Twitter (@PhysicsToday) and on Facebook and share your eclipse photos.
Capturing the moment
23 August, 11pm ET
Physics Today assistant editor and staff photographer Cynthia Cummings took the photo above from Mineral Mound State Park in Eddyville, Kentucky. The star Regulus can be seen to the left of the eclipsed Sun.
An experience of a lifetime
21 August, 5:30pm ET (3:30pm MT)—Andrew Grant, reporting from Sun Valley, Idaho
It’s been about four hours since I witnessed my first total solar eclipse, and I’m finding it difficult to link my thoughts into coherent prose. So here is a list of some takeaways:
The essential toolkit for a solar eclipse, partial or total, includes a white sheet or blanket and every perforated object you can find. Our sheet became a laboratory for children and adults to experiment with colanders, slotted spoons, cheese graters, and Ritz crackers as pinhole projectors. Ritz are particularly effective. If I were Nabisco, I would have spent the last few months plugging Ritz as the official viewer and snack of the Great American Eclipse.
I was taught by my college journalism professor to save the word unique for things that are truly one-of-a-kind. But unique definitely applies to the lighting in the 15 minutes or so prior to totality. It was reminiscent of late afternoon, yet the Sun was so high in the sky that the entire landscape was illuminated uniformly. It was reminiscent of an approaching storm, yet there were no clouds. We were able to take our sunglasses off without worrying about glare, even though the Sun itself was still far too bright to look at.
The drop in temperature is noticeable long before totality. And the wind kicks up due to the sudden drop in insolation. With its nonexistent humidity, Sun Valley was the ideal place to notice those phenomena.
The science community needs to step up its game to distribute eclipse glasses for the next US eclipse, in April 2024. Pinhole projectors are interesting but insufficient to enjoy the full eclipse experience.
Totality is just as surreal and awe-inspiring as the seasoned eclipse hunters say it is. The audio below captures the reaction of about 100 people as the diamond ring feature appeared and the Moon moved over the last sliver of Sun, commencing totality. It will be interesting to compare the buildup to the 2024 eclipse with that of this one. More Americans will have seen totality—and, if they’re like me, they’ll be dragging as many friends and family members as they can.
Timelapse from DC
21 August, 4:30pm ET
Washington, DC, local Richard Barnhill created this timelapse of the eclipse from images taken 2.5 minutes apart until a storm interrupted his viewing.
Experimenting with pinhole cameras
21 August, 1pm ET (11am MT)—Andrew Grant, reporting from Sun Valley, Idaho
A spiritual eclipse eve
21 August, 1am ET (midnight CT)—Cynthia Cummings, reporting from Makanda, Illinois
In celebration of the eclipse, the Little Grassy United Methodist Camp in Makanda is hosting a Native American Festival. The camp is very close to the point of longest duration of totality. An eclipse is a sacred event to many Native American people.
During the afternoon on Sunday, there were crafts for children and a Native American craft fair. Among the craftsmen my husband and I met was Bucky Waltman (pictured), also known as Rolling Thunder, a member of the Choctaw tribe, who modeled his mask and drum.
Sunday evening featured a spirit fire, ceremonies, drums, a flute player, a storyteller, and dancing. It was a beautiful evening to sit out under the stars. One of the speakers discussed global warming, as he had recently traveled to Greenland to meet with other spiritual leaders there.
It was a very calming, peaceful kick-off to the main event tomorrow: the solar eclipse.
What to expect during totality
20 August, 11pm ET (9pm MT)—Andrew Grant, reporting from Sun Valley, Idaho
During the totality phase of the eclipse, sky watchers will witness a rare sight: the Sun’s corona. Rachel Osten, a stellar astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, kicked off the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting here with a public talk about coronae on the Sun and other stars.
Osten explained that the shape of the Sun’s corona is tied to the phase of the 11-year solar cycle. Due to the current minimal solar activity, astronomers expect the corona to have a relatively simple shape tomorrow:
Credit: Rachel Osten
There’s a minuscule chance that the Sun will put on a major show during totality with a coronal mass ejection. It may be extremely unlikely, but it’s not unprecedented, Osten said: In 1860 Italian astronomer Guglielmo Tempel drew the sketch below of the corona during a total eclipse. At lower right is a circular feature that may very well be a coronal mass ejection, more than a century before it was discovered.
The center of the action
20 August, 1pm ET (noon CT)—Cynthia Cummings, reporting from Carbondale, Illinois
Above, a child draws a picture of the eclipse. Below, visitors test out prospective lunar rovers.
Tomorrow the small town of Carbondale will enjoy nearly 2 minutes 40 seconds of totality, among the longest duration possible for this eclipse. That’s enough reason to draw in visitors. But by sheer cosmic coincidence, Carbondale also lies near the center of the action for the next US solar eclipse in April 2024. That’s made Carbondale the destination of destinations for the Great American Eclipse.
This morning I went to the Crossroads Astronomy, Science, and Technology Expo in the Southern Illinois University Arena. There were lots of information booths and many activities for children. They could make their own eclipse picture, dig in a lunar sand box, and decorate a pair of eclipse glasses. Kids could also eat a Girl Scout eclipse cookie, created by taking a thin mint and a shortbread cookie and holding them together for 2 minutes and 40 seconds before eating.
Outside the arena was an exhibit by the Southern Illinois University Rover Design Team, a student organization whose members create vehicles for future Moon-bound astronauts. The team had various hand-built rovers that people could try out. The prototypes are raced and judged by NASA each year at the Human Exploration Rover Challenge, held in Huntsville, Alabama.
Beyond the US
20 August, noon ET (10am MT)—Andrew Grant, reporting from Sun Valley, Idaho
For those of us in the US itching to see the eclipse, here are the latest cloud cover predictions from the National Weather Service.
Credit: National Weather Service
But commenter Don Cox, a retired physicist who resides in the US Virgin Islands, dutifully points out that tomorrow’s eclipse is not restricted to the continental US. The path of totality begins in the North Pacific and ends in the Atlantic. Sky watchers in Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, the Caribbean islands, Mexico, Central America, and even northeastern Russia, western Europe, and northern South America will see a partial eclipse. If you’re in those areas, check out NASA’s interactive eclipse map to learn times and how big of a bite the Moon will take out of the Sun. Cox and his friends will see up to 80% of the Sun obscured between about 2:15pm and 4:45pm local time.
Signs along the eclipse path
20 August, 11am ET
A highway sign in Dubois, Wyoming, alerts drivers to stay alert during the eclipse.A grocery store in Ketchum, Idaho, is closing briefly to allow their employees to watch totality.Retailers at the Sun Valley Resort are wooing eclipse watchers.
Flying toward totality
18 August, noon ET—Andrew Grant, en route to Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley, a ski resort town in south-central Idaho, wasn’t the first place that came to mind when I pondered where to view the eclipse. But ultimately I was lured there by the chance to learn about the universe’s most powerful objects on top of experiencing totality. Beginning Sunday, the Sun Valley Resort will host this year’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s High Energy Astrophysics Division.
As HEAD chair Christopher Reynolds told me, Sun Valley wasn’t the group’s first thought either. Several years ago, long before the eclipse was on the radar of the vast majority of Americans, HEAD leadership signed a contract to hold the meeting the week of 21 August in the more familiar resort town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Based on the generous terms and cheap room rates, it’s safe to assume that hotel management wasn’t aware of the eclipse—and that HEAD officials didn’t mention it. “We thought we had the whole thing in the bag,” Reynolds said.
Unfortunately for Reynolds and his colleagues, the Jackson Hole hotel had an escape clause in the contract—and, once they realized the financial implications of eclipse mania, they exercised it. HEAD officials, along with the AAS Solar Physics Division, which had booked the same resort for its conference, were left scrambling for a new site. The solar physicists opted for Portland, Oregon, which means they’ll be traveling by bus to reach the zone of totality. HEAD, meanwhile, negotiated a contract in early 2016 with the Sun Valley Resort to retain a prime viewing location.
Although I’m disappointed that the solar folks won’t be around to share their expertise, it should be entertaining to watch the Sun with astronomers who study black holes, active galaxies, and other objects with many orders of magnitude more energy. Sun Valley will get about a minute and a quarter of totality beginning just before 11:30am local time.
Previous Physics Today coverage of the eclipse and solar physics:
