EASTERN SUBURBS – A pair of events were held recently to prepare attendees for the total solar eclipse coming to Syracuse next week. Within the East Syracuse Minoa Central School District, there was Pine Grove Middle School’s “Eclipse Prep Day” earlier this past month, and then last week the Community Library of DeWitt & Jamesville brought in a speaker from the Museum of Science & Technology (MOST) to go over what happens during a solar eclipse.
Pine Grove Eclipse Day
The eclipse prep event at the middle school on Spartan Way in East Syracuse welcomed Dr. Katelyn Barber, an assistant professor of meteorology from SUNY Oswego, along with two of her students, Carl Murphy and Vincent DiBattista, as well as atmospheric scientist Dr. Joe O’Brien from Argonne National Laboratory.
That afternoon in March, Barber and company shared an overview of her university’s eclipse-centered research project that builds on the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project being funded by NASA.
That effort entails launching one weather balloon an hour over a 30-hour span to cover the upcoming natural phenomenon’s before stage, then the entire solar eclipse happening Monday, April 8, right on through to about 8 p.m. the following day. The field campaign on the Oswego campus will go on without hindrance as long as there isn’t lightning in the area or “particularly extremely windy” conditions, though a sunny day is preferred, Barber said.
The intention is for the balloons to rise 35 kilometers above the earth’s surface and provide a record of the historic event as they travel through the atmosphere. Each balloon will have a radiosonde, which is a small package containing a temperature sensor, a relative humidity sensor, and an antenna to track wind speed, direction and pressure.
Oswego’s team is one of 55 from universities spread out across the path of totality that will be collecting scientific observations for the ballooning project.
The presentation geared toward Pine Grove’s sixth, seventh and eighth graders let students break into rotating stations.
One station focused on how the balloons capture data points and allowed the students to hypothesize the things that will change in nature in response to the eclipse. Another station went into heliophysics, why eclipses happen, and their cultural importance, including how ancient civilizations viewed eclipses as omens. The third station explored astrophysics in general and the different instruments used for eclipses, like telescopes and pinhole viewers.
Sue Sobon, who heads Pine Grove’s science department, was the one who orchestrated the building-wide eclipse prep event that day with help from STEM teacher Becky Loy.
Sobon said she’s also looking to provide her students ultraviolet light-sensitive plastic beads in time for the eclipse to keep as mementos, some of which would glow in the dark. She is also looking to obtain apparatuses that change light waves into vibrations, allowing blind people to experience the eclipse.
“Barring other outlying conditions of course, most people will be able to experience this eclipse in some way, and it’s just so magical to bring that to light for everyone and have them get stoked about something so cool,” Sobon said.
Sobon said she appreciates that the solar eclipse will be something anyone can take in regardless of socioeconomic status, race or age. From her perspective as a sixth grade earth science teacher at Pine Grove, she added that it’s “so special” seeing kids get “revved up” for the once-in-a-lifetime event, contending that it could be the moment that sparks a greater interest in science for some.
Barber, whose team has visited various schools in the area, said it’s exciting doing outreach and engaging with students about the upcoming eclipse.
“It’s been really exciting trying to emphasize how rare this event actually this,” she said. “Just telling the students that the next total solar eclipse in New York State isn’t until 2079 puts the bigger perspective on it that these students will be significantly older when it happens again.”
While thanking the ESM district for supporting the prep event, Sobon said she was grateful for Barber’s “phenomenal and fun” presentation.
The day of the April 8 eclipse, school will not be in session for ESM, Fayetteville-Manlius or Jamesville-DeWitt students, with J-D scheduling it as a staff development day.
Community Library MOST Presentation
Matt Fagan, a science educator from the MOST, gave a talk at the DeWitt library on Jamesville Road the evening of March 28.
He started by informing the attendees that the moon is able to fully block out the sun during an eclipse despite being 400 times smaller than it in diameter because the moon is 400 times closer to Earth.
Fagan said every solar eclipse will start with a partial eclipse, which will give way to a diamond ring effect and then the total covering of the sun by the moon. To prevent impairing one’s vision, he said it’s only safe to look up at the sun without the right glasses once the entire face of the sun is blotted out and its corona is the only thing left to see.
Fagan said the complete eclipse will be viewable in Syracuse for about a minute and a half starting at 3:23 p.m. on April 8. The entire duration of the eclipse event, partials included, will be about two hours and 25 minutes beginning at 2:09 that afternoon, he said.
During that brief stretch of totality, people will also be able to see Venus, Mars and Saturn in the sky if it’s clear out in addition to Sirius potentially and the Pleiades, or “Seven Sisters,” star cluster. The temperature is expected to dip a bit too, because the heat from the sun is lost for that moment.
Since Syracuse is a prime vantage point for the eclipse event, an influx of people will be coming into town and there will likely be traffic congestion locally, Fagan made sure to mention. He said visitors will be coming in from out of state and places like New York City, with some making a three-day weekend out of it and others making the trip the morning of, only to go back the way they came later the same day.
When the eclipse causes daytime darkness, animals will behave differently than normal because they will think it’s nighttime all of a sudden, Fagan said. For example, owls might start hooting and crickets might start chirping, while foxes and bats might come out from the wilderness.
The next total solar eclipse in the United States is not until 2044, and beyond that, the next one passing over Syracuse will be in 2144, Fagan said. Before this year’s, the most recent total eclipse seen locally took place about 100 years ago.
On April 8 starting at 1 p.m., the Community Library is handing out eclipse glasses with the authentic ISO 123122 safety code right outside the library.
