Parts of North America will be completely in the dark when the Great North American Solar Eclipse happens on April 8. NASA scientist Nikki Rayl gives the details of how Americans can view the eclipse, and what the solar event will mean for scientists. 

Chicago

The Great North American Solar Eclipse is set to sweep across parts of North America, casting a shadow and plunging areas into darkness. The event scheduled for April 8 will be a significant astronomical occurrence for both casual observers and the scientific community. NASA scientist Nikki Rayl has offered insights into how people in America can experience this celestial event and discussed the scientific importance of the eclipse.

Eclipses such as these offer unique opportunities for scientific study, particularly in understanding the sun’s corona, solar flares, and how solar events impact Earth’s atmosphere and electromagnetic field. Rayl's guidance is poised to help Americans prepare for the eclipse, ensuring they can safely enjoy and observe this rare phenomenon. The eclipse promises a moment of awe and scientific discovery as it traverses the U.S.



Total solar eclipse to traverse the U.S. in April

I'm excited about this. The total solar eclipse is exactly one month away. It'll be happening on April 8th and we won't get another one over the contiguous U.S. until 2044. So get your solar viewing glasses, get ready to witness the moon blocking the sun and in southern Illinois it will be a total eclipse. Joining us now with more on what we can expect here and elsewhere is Nikki Rael, NASA flight director and heliophysicist with the NASA. And Nikki, you and I were just talking, you gotta be getting excited about this eclipse, aren't you? Oh yeah, I'm thrilled. I can't wait. I largely missed the last one and I'm beyond excited for the upcoming one. It was so wonderful. Now you're going to be in Indianapolis, one of several big cities that this is going to be passing over. I am, that's correct. I'm hopefully going to be with my family and we're going to have some NASA events. There's going to be NASA events across the nation and a wonderful opportunity for many people across the U.S. to really to visualize this eclipse. Yeah, you think of Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Little Rock, Indianapolis you mentioned, Cleveland, Buffalo, even Montreal. But in Chicago, we are not going to get the total eclipse. We're going to see a really impressive partial eclipse. So what kind of things will we see and what's the safest way to view it, Nikki? Yeah, so you will still see a great event, a partial eclipse and at 93 percent in Chicago that is still a a pretty fantastic viewing of a partial eclipse. As the moon moves in to block out the the light of the sun, you're going to see a pretty close to a full eclipse, but a partial eclipse. We're going to be able to experience a longer duration during this eclipse, about four and a half minutes of totality, depending on where you are on the path and really experience that time of the light being blocked out. Now, as we're transitioning in and out of the totality, you are, as you mentioned, you're going to need some solar glasses or a solar filter or to use an indirect viewing method to keep your eyes safe, which is first and foremost of importance. Yeah, you Google pinhole camera and I think that's the projection method would be great. All right. I want to bring up the science of eclipse viewing. Back in 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington conducted an experiment. He went and photographed the eclipse of the sun to prove Einstein's theory of relativity. Is there anything else we or you in particular learn now from total eclipses or is it just all a wow show? Well, it is wow, but I'm so glad you brought up the science and how much the science has changed over time. We have the opportunity to visualize the corona or the outer atmosphere of the sun during an eclipse, which we can't usually see when there's so much bright visual light there. And so during this time, we can see, you know, really good view of our coronal mass ejections and flares and understanding and visibility of the energy transfer between the sun and the upper atmosphere of the Earth. So it's an incredible time for science. It's an incredible time for citizen science, for your viewers to help participate in taking observations of the things that are going around and they're observing. But we're really excited for the moments of totality and transitioning in and out for science.

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