(light music) There's going to be a total solar eclipse.

The moon is going to completely block the sun for about 4 minutes, 10 seconds.

Any time you get an opportunity to see a total solar eclipse, I think they're just fascinating things to watch.

People don't understand how important this is.

This is the longest totality that has ever come across United States soil, and it's coming through our backyard.

It's probably the most spectacular thing I've ever seen in my life.

I'm not a religious person, but I would say it was a religious experience.

Definitely couldn't take my eyes off it.

To see the alignment of it was really cool.

I didn't want to miss a second of it.

(upbeat music) The sun is always there.

The moon is always there.

But you have to come at it with a certain sense of wonder.

My name is Bob Loper.

I'm a research astrophysicist at Marshall Space Flight Center.

Is very remarkable that we have a sun and a moon that can line up in such a way that there can be an eclipse that we can actually see on the planet.

So the moon cast large enough a shadow.

And that's really what an eclipse is, is the moon's shadow is being cast across the earth as the moon and the sun move in our field of view.

In general, there are three types of eclipses that I as I separate them in my mind.

A solar eclipse in general, you get the moon gets in the way of our view of the sun and whether we call it a partial or an annular or total eclipse depends on how much of the sun is blocked.

So a partial is just you block a portion of the sun.

It requires that the moon be fairly precisely along the earth-sun line.

So that we actually see the moon in our field of view.

If the alignment is particularly good, you can get what's called an annular eclipse, where the portion of the sun that's blocked is the center of the disk.

And you see this ring of fire around it.

That's called an annulus.

If the moon is closer then the moon appears bigger in a field of view, and then that annular eclipse is instead a total eclipse.

And then you're not seeing any more of the big yellow ball of flame in the sky.

But you're seeing the stuff around it.

You're seeing the solar atmosphere.

I cannot remember a time when I was not interested in either geology or astronomy.

I would use the telescope that belonged to friends of my parents and look at the various things in the sky and try to figure out what they were and try to find the planets.

My name is Mitzi Adams and I am a research astrophysicist with a specialty in solar science.

The lunar eclipse that happened a few years ago and it was coming up kind of like the eclipse now.

And she's like, Mom, I got to see it.

We have to see it.

I usually stay up doing homework, until like 12:00.

And I was like, Well, I might as well stay up because if I go to sleep, I'm going to miss it.

So I'm up just doing random things like watching TV or, you know, my phone, watching the time and making sure I don't miss it.

And then it's finally like 2:50.

So I'm like, I go to my mom's room and I'm like, Hey, Mom, Mom, mom, mom, come on.

We're going to miss it.

We're going to miss it.

And I said, Well, have you gone to sleep at all?

No, I've been up all night.

I don't want to miss it.

And I did this and this and this.

And I could tell she had not gone to sleep.

My name is Mekenzie Racy and I want to be an aerospace engineer at NASA.

When I saw my first solar eclipse in fifth grade, it was like, my gosh, this is really cool.

Miss Marsico's classroom.

She was my fifth grade teacher.

I have more love for science because of Miss Marsico.

There's probably, for many people, a once in a lifetime experience to actually look up and see the sun disappear from the sky and have the stars come out.

I'm Joe Mattis.

I am the deputy manager of the Program Planning and Control Office for the Human Landing System.

On the day of the eclipse, I'll be in Russellville, Arkansas.

I will be in Russellville, Arkansas.

You want to be on TV?

Yeah, right here.

We're filming right here.

So they say, I'm going to have them to introduce you, this Terry Thomas.

He's our eclipse czar.

He knows everything about the eclipses, everything and anything.

No, now, Terry's our Parks and Rec guy.

My name is Fred Teague.

I'm mayor of Russellville, Arkansas.

I think I'm the luckiest person alive to be mayor of my hometown.

Well, eclipse 2024, I mean, we're, gosh, we're 90, 91 days out right now.

Somewhere out there, NASA will be here.

Christie Graham, our A&P director, really worked hard on that.

You know, early on, she's like, I'm talking to NASA.

We're like, what?!

You're talking to NASA?

And then it's like more conversations than she's like, NASA's committed to come.

And then the next thing you know, hey, NASA's coming in October and they're going to bring a team.

(upbeat music) (indistinct conversation) You know, I think our first location was here to meet with a journalism class here.

Come up here and look at the Performing Arts Center.

We looked at our local fire department, we looked at downtown.

We looked at different locations throughout Russellville.

And just to try to figure out where they were going to be.

And we went to Arkansas Tech and we looked at different viewing location potentials.

It was a really interesting day.

It felt like one of the things I walked away from that meeting was I felt like we were on the right track.

We were taking the right steps.

We were planning in the right direction.

What was it releasing as it burned?

My name is Dr. Ginni McDonald and I'm the superintendent of schools for the Russellville school district.

What we're really excited about is the already awesome experiences that our students receive on a day to day basis, year to year, will be a little bit different this spring in 2024 because of the eclipse.

And the opportunities that NASA can provide, which may simply be a zoom interaction with an astronaut, or it may be a connection between a scientist and our high school AP science classes.

So there's a wide range and a continuum of learning experiences that we're able to provide.

And we have a person dedicated to ensure that all of those types of things take place.

It's a great opportunity for us to show off who we are.

We're anticipating people from over 40 states and probably a dozen different countries being in our local area.

And I think there's a group of people that don't comprehend that, and I'm not sure I do.

There's a group of people that this eclipse is just like, it's so key.

It's just this massive eclipse.

It's the largest totality.

It's a it's a really amazing thing.

Even if you don't think it's going to be.

My earliest sort of interest in astronomy physics.

I think I was in middle school when the Mars rovers Spirit of Opportunity landed on Mars, and at that age, I thought robots were like the coolest thing.

(laughter) So, you know, the fact that they're driving basically like an RC car on another planet was just, you know, mind blowing to a, you know, middle school kid.

So I'm actually from Russellville originally, so I grew up a little over a mile from where we are right now.

My name is Dr. Matthew Hankins, and I am a physics and astronomy professor here at Arkansas Tech University.

We're partnering with NASA.

We're going to be using the observatory to take really deep and really detailed images of the solar corona.

So what the solar corona is, is it's basically like the outer atmosphere of the sun.

And typically you can't see it because the sun itself is so bright and the corona is very faint.

So the only time you can really actually see the corona is during an eclipse with the moon blocks out the brightest part of the sun.

There are different, interesting things that happen with the corona, where you may have heard of something called a coronal mass ejection before.

Basically, the sun's outer atmosphere can spit off material.

And these types of coronal ejections and things like that, they produce these big interesting patterns on the extended atmosphere of the sun that, you know, we're hoping to take images of and study.

This is the telescope at the campus observatory.

It is a 16 inch Newtonian reflecting telescope.

What that means is that it has mirrors inside the telescope that are used to produce the images and calling it a Newtonian telescope, it just refers to how the mirrors are laid out inside the telescope.

If we were actually going to be observing like something in the night sky, we have a computer downstairs that we actually use typically to point the telescope in different locations.

So when we talk about this being a 16 inch telescope, we're referring to the mirror that is in the inside of the telescope.

So you can see the mirror through there.

So that's what's known as the primary mirror.

So when light comes into the telescope, it hits that mirror that you're seeing and then bounces back in this direction.

And this mirrors what's known as a secondary mirror.

So it bounces off the primary, comes to the secondary, and this mirror is at an angle where the light is going to bounce off it and go over here through this tube, the light then comes to this.

So this is the camera of the telescope.

So when we take an image where we actually collect data.

(camera clicks) This telescope is a bit of an interesting custom make where it's actually both Newtonian and Cassegrain.

And so the secondary mirror, instead of sending light over where the camera is, if I move it ever so slightly, it will send the light here because this is really easy to put an eyepiece in.

Somebody stand here and look at it.

But that's the basic configuration of the telescope.

Telescopes, they actually get much, much more expensive.

It's exponentially more expensive the larger the telescope gets.

And so that's that's the reason why most amateurs wouldn't have access to a telescope the size that we have here.

One other difference between the two also, a lot of small telescopes, they will use lenses to focus the light in the telescope rather than the mirrors.

The reason for that is lenses are relatively inexpensive to make compared to mirrors at sort of small sizes.

But when you start talking about really big lenses and mirrors, big lenses are hard to make, really difficult to make.

And so almost all of the bigger telescopes use mirrors instead.

Typically in the daytime you probably notice that you can't really see stars, and that's because the sun is just so overwhelmingly bright, hitting the Earth's atmosphere that all of the blue sky that you see is basically light from the sun still, even though it's not in the direction of the sun, but the sunlight gets scattered when it hits our atmosphere.

So pretty much all the light you see outside on daytime is from the sun.

So what's going to happen during the total solar eclipse?

Again, the moon is going to block out all of that light.

If you compare, you know, sort of your average, you know, star out there to the sun, there are a difference of a few million times in brightness difference, you know.

But at the same time, I mean, the sun is a star.

It's just the sun is so close to us and other stars are so distant and so all of the blue sky you're used to seeing, you know, during the day is going to go away for that period of time while the moon is blocking the sunlight.

And so, yes, you will be able to see stars just as if it was nighttime when you're in this total solar eclipse.

So it's going to be, you know, absolutely wild with the fact that the moon is very close to the earth.

It appears larger to us.

The sun is actually huge compared to both the earth and the moon.

But it appears much smaller on the sky to us because it is so distant.

Well, it started with Ms. Marsico.

She gave them a project and I was like, Give me your perspective of the eclipse.

And she came home and she was kind of excited about it at first, until we started working on the project and she just took over.

It just, it developed, it grew into this love and inquisitiveness about the solar system.

But you're talking about a kid who works really hard, gave everything that she could to everything in class, not just this.

And the eclipse was just the start of that.

I remember a little Mekensie on Eclipse Day and this she had this dress and it was like a solar system dress.

She's out on the sidewalk.

She's looking up at the eclipse with her glasses on in her solar system dress.

I mean.

She was ready to go.

After the eclipse, I just started really looking at the moon being like, this full moon is really cool.

And I got a telescope for my birthday.

It's just something that I can see myself doing.

And I got the opportunity to go to space camp, and once I heard about space camp, I was like, Hey, this is cool.

I, you know, did the eclipse why not explore more?

And I went to the robotics program because I was already, you know, into a little bit of robotics and so went to robotics and learned to program drones, build rovers.

And it was really fun.

There were lots of other people from my school that went, But in the robotics program, from our school counting me, there were three African-American girls.

And so that made me really happy.

That's big to, to be a kid from a small town and leaving your family for a full week.

That's a big deal.

The sun is bright, and if you stare directly at it, it will blind you.

It will be very bad for your eyesight.

Do not do it.

So during partial eclipses or leading up to the total solar eclipse, or even just an annular eclipse, you always need to have eye protection.

One safe way to view an eclipse was through the use of a specialized piece of equipment known as a solar telescope.

The visible light that we see around us is typically white or what looks to be white.

And when we run that light through a prism, it separates that light into a familiar pattern called the rainbow.

One end of the rainbow is the red light.

And in that red light, there's some very interesting activity that can be seen on the sun.

So with this telescope, I'm able to see a very narrow portion of that red light and all the activity going on in the chromosphere of the sun.

So that's where we can see prominences, which you can think of as flames shooting off the side of the sun.

We can see filaments which are plasma swirls or swirls of what appears to be the surface of the sun, sunspots and other interesting features.

These are official NASA solar viewing glasses.

This is another way to safely look at the sun.

You have to keep them on during the partial phases up to the time of totality when you can take them off and you have to be conscious of the time that totality ends and put them back on before the sun reappears.

So you need to kind of take care of them, treat them gently.

There's a brief window of time where you can remove your eye protection.

And that's part of what makes the total solar eclipse so fascinating, is that during totality for that 4 minutes or so, they will have this eclipse.

You will be able to take off your glasses.

You can see all these features going on because that damaging light will be mostly blocked out.

The safest way is probably indirectly you can do something like a pinhole camera where you're essentially seeing an image of the eclipse projected on something.

So you're not getting direct sunlight in your eyes.

Step one, you're going to open the box and then you're going to cut little holes on each side.

But don't get the middle because you're going to need the middle.

And then once you cut those, you need to get a blank piece of white paper and cut it about the size of the bottom of the box.

And once you do that, you get some tape and you tape it on the inside at the bottom, you have to make sure it's secure and it doesn't move around at all.

And then once you get that taped on, you're going to tape the flap shut and then you're going to get some foil and tape it right here.

And after you make sure the foil is on, get a push pin and poke a tiny hole there.

It doesn't need to be too big because if it's too big, then it won't be as accurate.

But you need to leave this side open so you can look through it because this is where the eclipse is going to be shining through to where you could see it.

You're going to be facing away from the eclipse.

You're just going to look through here and you should be able to track it through this hole.

Did you ever read Hidden Figures?

Did you watch the movie?

I watched the movie, but I didn't read it.

Do you feel inspired by Katherine Johnson?

Probably Mary, not just because she does what I want to do.

Just seeing smart black women that look like me and just realizing that, Hey, I can do this because it has been done.

They've gone down in history doing this, so why can't I do it?

I can't spell this without like, you know that cheer popping up in my head, (indistinct) You have to do that.

I don't have to.

It just pops up.

Well, you know the No Doubt song?

Or the Gwen Stefani song, the banana song.

I have to sing that, but I've started doing.

Interesting front part, majors.

What are you interested in?

Aerospace engineering.

Number one, look at that.

I am planning for college, planning early so I can get a good head start on it, scholarships, trying to find who has my major.

And so I've been looking at University of Alabama of Huntsville, because that's where I went to space camp.

And so they have a college, they have my major, and I think I'll be good.

And so going out of state would definitely give me a better opportunity of getting that degree and getting the job I want, to be an aerospace engineer at NASA.

I'm not really scared to go away from home, but I know this is something I want to do.

And so if that means that I have to leave home, then I will do it.

I want to make myself known by my own accomplishments.

I love that.

Am I going the wrong way?

Wait, no, what's that one?

Stay curious.

Ask yourself questions about everything.

You have to be curious about the world because curiosity is how discoveries are made.

We ask ourselves, How does this work?

Why does this work?

Asking questions is essential, I think essential to everything that NASA does.

So curiosity first.

Second, you will have to put in the work to finding the answers to the questions you've just asked.

Did you want to try to see the planet?

Sure.

And it is actually pretty bright.

Is it?

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Try to find it again.

Got it?

Yeah.

Can you see it?

Yeah.

Looks like a tiny version of the moon.

Does it really?

You can see it?

Yes.

That's so cool.

Well, you saw your first planet.

That's so cool.

Was it orange looking like on the ground?

Like a tiny moon.

That's sweet.

Look at you.

We've never seen one.

Just the moon.

But you got to see it.

The things you do for science, right?

Mekenzie's goal is to be at NASA.

And, you know I will do anything I can do to help her get there.

That would just be tremendous.

And I will be glad to say I had the tiniest little part in getting her there.

So it's not our job to put our thoughts and feelings on to them about what we think they should be in life.

We've always wanted to make sure our kids have had us in their corner to support them.

Her dream is to work for NASA and be an aerospace engineer programming rovers or sending rovers to the moon or, you know, being a part of that and again, letting God be our guide, however the chips may fall, but that's where we would, that's what we want for her.

Her dreams to come true.

I'm a scientist, so I want people to ask questions.

I want people to be curious.

I want younger people to be inspired to become scientists and to work for NASA.

And it's important because we need leaders who have questions and seek out answers to how the universe works.

On my first full solar eclipse, I didn't, I'd heard that people ooo and aah when it happens, and I thought that was pretty silly until the event happened and I was right in there with everybody else.

It's just you just can't control yourself.

So I think it's going to be a wonderful opportunity that everybody will really remember for the rest of their lives.

Well, this one is twice as long as the last one I saw in 2017.

It's very different than the first one I saw, which was in March 1970.

This eclipse is very special because this partly because this will be my last eclipse viewed as an employee of NASA because I'm going to retire in December.

Enjoy it, and don't get so caught up in observing and taking pictures.

It kind of has something to do with mindfulness and being present in the moment and and really experiencing what's going on around you with all of your senses.

You feel the wind come up when totality begins, you feel the temperature drop, you see birds going to roost.

So I think I think it's really important to give all of your senses an opportunity to experience the eclipse.

So, you know, there are people who probably have gone their entire lifetime without seeing an eclipse.

And certainly if you pull up like a historic map of eclipse across the U.S. that go back a couple of hundred years and a couple of hundred years in the future, there are places where there are no eclipse at that specific geographic place.

You know, so so it's very fascinating in that sort of a way that we are, you know, fortunate enough to be in the place that we are.

Record it in your mind and then, you know, enjoy someone else's recording, capture that magic for you so you're not looking at it through a phone and just don't overlook it.

Don't take it for granted, really embrace this and try to find the magic in it because we are blessed that it's coming through your backyard.

It's something special.

And so a total one.

It's like once you look at it like, wow, it looks like the moon is on fire.

Hearing that it would happen when I was in high school in 2024 is like, man, that's going to be a long time.

And now here it is.

It's like, wow, I'm going to get to experience it again and it's going to be really cool.

(suspenseful music)