Tag: Eclipses

For a few moments this year, the sun was a lime green portal for Vicki Stirm. It happened while she was standing among tens of thousands of people on an asphalt racetrack in Indiana, on the same day our moon briefly stopped our star from illuminating our world. The ocean of onlookers around her had been watching a total solar eclipse unfold through paper glasses shaped like what you might’ve gotten as a child before a 3D movie, similarly meant to prime the human eye for a new layer of…

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POTSDAM, N.Y. — At first, it seemed like every other college orientation session happening in universities across the country. A handful of prospective students, my teenage daughter Zadie included, listened intently on the eighth floor of the administration building here while an admissions official shared all the amenities that the State University of New York Potsdam has to offer. In the back of the room, near me, were current university students ready to share their college life experiences. A two-hour tour lay ahead for all of us.  But throughout the…

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Syracuse, N.Y. — On Monday morning (April 8), a crowd began gathering on the lawn of the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology (MOST), hoping to witness a total solar eclipse. “I’ve seen a number of partial [solar] eclipses, but this is my first total eclipse,” said Lindsay Hays, a program scientist in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “So I’m very excited for it.” Hays answered questions from eclipse viewers as a part of the museum’s Solar Eclipse Festival, which lasted from 12 p.m. to 4…

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Since April 8, when I witnessed a total eclipse of the sun, I’ve been feeling progressively more melancholy. It isn’t because I was underwhelmed, or because my vantage point wasn’t ideal, or because of some depressing epiphany I had while watching the moon turn our planet’s star into a wispy white halo. I’ve actually been struggling to find the right words to explain my sullenness all week. I’ve been scribbling random thoughts in my iPhone notes app as they’ve emerged. They’ve come up as I sat in a Lyft, ate…

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Satellites saw the moon’s shadow from space on Monday (April 8). The 2024 total solar eclipse was visible in parts of the United States, Canada and Mexico on that day, thrilling millions of spectators across North America  — and from space, satellites could see the shadow of the moon falling across those regions in real-time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showcased the resulting photos, taken with the organization’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) series. For example, the imager on the GOES-16 satellite tracked the moon’s shadow using its…

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On Monday, April 8, a total solar eclipse swept through the skies over North America, delighting and astounding millions of onlookers who had traveled from across the globe to take in this incredible event. And our own space readers got in on the act, too. The sun was completely obscured by the moon across what is known as the “path of totality,” which was approximately 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide and 10,000 miles long (16,000 kilometers).  This 2024 total solar eclipse path crossed the four Mexican states of Sinaloa, Nayarit,…

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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — I worked out the perfect plan to propose to my partner during the April 8 solar eclipse, and the clouds somehow stayed away. I won’t bury the lede. She said yes.  I spent the last year planning my proposal to coincide with the 2024 total solar eclipse, lining up the perfect photo, figuring out what I would say, and getting the timing just right. I couldn’t be happier with how the day went. I’m not sure when it dawned on me, but with totality passing directly over my…

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