Okay.
So a solar eclipse happens
when the moon moves directly between the earth and the sun.
And with
an annular eclipse, the moon is a little bit farther away
than it ordinarily might be.
So it doesn't quite cover the entire disk of the sun.
And it leaves this ring, shape or annulus
behind.
And we call it an annular solar eclipse.
sure.
You want to make sure that you're using these special safety glasses?
These special solar viewing
glasses that you can pick up at public libraries and other locations.
But you want to make sure you have those on any time you're looking at the eclipse.
Otherwise, you can have some serious eye damage.
If you don't have a pair of these these solar glasses.
You can take a simple piece of paper and poke a little hole in it
and hold it up over the sidewalk.
And it'll actually project an image of the sun down onto that surface.
And you can view it that way.
If you don't have a piece of paper, you can actually just use your hand.
You can make a little bitty hole or look you can
look and see a small hole in in between your fingers and you hold that up
over the sidewalk, over your other hand, over a pretty much anything,
and actually create that pinhole camera effect just using your hand.
Oh, certainly.
My my favorite example are the sounding rockets
that they're going to be launching from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
They're going to be launching one just before the eclipse, one
during the eclipse, and our other one just after the eclipse.
And measuring things
like atmospheric temperature, the number of electrons that they detect
in their instruments as they move through the sky.
And they're going to be studying how the ionosphere, a charged particle
layer in the upper atmosphere changes with time because the solar input,
the solar, the sunlight moving into the atmosphere is lower during an eclipse.
So seeing how that changes with time is of particular
scientific interest.
Certainly
for the eclipse in April, the moon is actually going to be
just a little bit closer to us than it is than it is tomorrow.
And so it will perfectly cover the disk of the sun
and we'll see what's called a total solar eclipse.
Now, in this case, the the atmosphere of the sun,
the sorry, the surface of the sun is completely covered.
And all we're going to be able to see is this wispy outermost
layer of of the sun's atmosphere called the corona.
And it looks like crazy hair moving away from moving away from the disk of the sun.
We never, ever
get to see that except during a total eclipse.
So it's a very special occasion, and I hope folks make time to go out
and actually take a look at it.
I'm very excited, both as a scientist
and as and as a as a person, as a regular person.
I mean, the science opportunities are we're really excited about the science
opportunities that we've got lined up with, of course, the sounding rockets.
But we're also going to be having instrumentation on on high altitude
airplanes, taking all sorts of measurements of the sun.
But from a personal perspective, I
this is going to be my first total eclipse.
And I'm really excited to get out and actually experience it firsthand.
I know that when the eclipse is happening, then, of course, the lighting changes.
I mean, that kind of makes sense.
But because of that lighting change, the temperature comes down.
Birds actually morning birds start to chirp.
I'm looking forward to hearing the robins chirping.
Animals tend to get ready for bed and so on.
And it's just a it's a singular moment in time
where you get to see something along with, of course, you know, several billion
of your other of your closest friends.
You get to see this firsthand, this unique
opportunity, firsthand.
Well, first, go out and watch it.
Go out and actually experience this for yourself.
These things don't happen all that often.
They happen fairly regularly, of course,
but most of the time they happen out over the oceans.
It's rare when they actually happen over populated areas.
So take the opportunity and go out and witness this.
There's going to be a number of number of events at different places
throughout the country, mostly along the path path of the eclipse,
where you can go out and interact with folks from NASA and educators
and so on to actually really engage in this particular opportunity.
And finally, again, I'll point back to the citizen science opportunities.
These are events and phone apps and a number of other things
where you're actually able to help help NASA's scientists take data,
you know, measure temperatures and talk about things like how how the
eclipse made you feel and what you witnessed in the behavior
of animals and other people and the atmosphere and so on.
It's a great opportunity to get involved.
We have a lot of information out there.
The easiest place to go is go dot nasa.gov slash eclipse.
You can also find more information about activities.
How to build, how to build a pinhole camera that I mentioned earlier
and a whole bunch of other activities that you and children
and pretty much anyone can participate in.
So again that's go dot NASA's dot gov
slash eclipse as well as on social media with at NASA's sun.