Medford, Ore. – We’re just a few days away from a once in a lifetime event, the first total solar eclipse to span the continental United States in nearly a century.
Matt Jordan was joined by Rogue Community College Professor Dusty Rittenbach, who helped explain how an eclipse works:
One way to look at a solar eclipse is to have three spheres. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth at certain points, will block out the Sun – and by an accident of nature, each of these when viewed from Earth take up half a degree of arc.
The Moon will perfectly block out the main portion of the Sun allowing us to see solar flares and other aspects of the Sun which are difficult to observe when you have the bright part of the sun staring in your astronomical devices.
Earth is the only planet in our solar system that has eclipses.
Those that are traveling to different parts of Oregon I gave them this light sensor and data logger and when they get back next week we’ll take a look at it.
It’s important to use properly vetted eclipse glasses the NASA.gov site is a great place to start. Best of all is the darkness, so it’s cutting out a lot of sunlight, even your darkest glasses don’t block nearly enough, and it really blocks that UV light, which would be most damaging to your retinas.
For more information on how an eclipse works you can visit nasa.gov.
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