Eclipse Watching B-Roll At NASA Goddard

Soundbites with Kristen Weaver, Deputy Coordinator For the Globe Observer Program. TRT 8:40. She answers the following questions. For some questions there are two versions of the answer - one looking on camera and one looking off camera1. What is the GLOBE Observer app?2. How can people participate in the GLOBE Observer experiment?3. How will this data help NASA?4. Why does NASA need citizen scientists?5. Can you tell us more about safety during the eclipse?6. Can you still provide data even if you're not in the path of totality?7. Why are you excited for this eclipse?8. Why is an eclipse a good time to do this experiment? How Cool is the Eclipse?The Earth is solar-powered. So what happens when the Sun's light is blocked, even temporarily? If you measure air and surface temperature, how cool is the eclipse?Help us answer these questions and others by collecting citizen science data using the GLOBE Observer app during the Total Solar Eclipse on August 21st, 2017.* Observe how the eclipse changes atmospheric conditions near you.* Contribute to a citizen science database used by scientists and students to study the effects of eclipses on the atmosphere* Provide comparison data even if you are not in the path of totality* The eclipse app button is already visible within GLOBE Observer, and you can make clouds measurements now. Air temperature measurement will become available on August 18th.Get the app here.Answers to other questions here.Printable GLOBE Observer materials and other activities here. Related pages

Music credit: Ascending Lanterns by Philip HochstrateWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. Animated total solar eclipse GIF Animation of total solar eclipse On Monday, August 21, 2017, our nation will be treated to a total eclipse of the sun.The eclipse will be visible -- weather permitting -- across all of North America. The whole continent will experience a partial eclipse lasting two to three hours. Halfway through the event, anyone within a 60 to 70 mile-wide path from Oregon to South Carolina will experience a total eclipse. During those brief moments when the moon completely blocks the sun’s bright face for 2 + minutes, day will turn into night, making visible the otherwise hidden solar corona, the sun’s outer atmosphere. Bright stars and planets will become visible as well. This is truly one of nature’s most awesome sights.The eclipse provides a unique opportunity to study the sun, Earth, moon and their interaction because of the eclipse’s long path over land coast to coast. Scientists will be able to take ground-based and airborne observations over a period of an hour and a half to complement the wealth of data provided by NASA assets.Learn more at https://eclipse2017.nasa.govFind more videos about the solar ecilpse on the Sun Eclipse 2017 gallery page. Related pages

Insolation (the amount of sunlight reaching the ground) is affected dramatically by the Moon's shadow during the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. The color key for the insolation map. A map-like view of the Earth shows insolation (sunlight intensity) over land during the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. This equirectangular projection is suitable for spherical displays and for spherical mapping in 3D animation software. The obscuration dataset used to calculate insolation. Obscuration, the fraction of the Sun's area covered by the Moon, is calculated at 10-second intervals from 16:25:40 to 20:25:30 UTC at a resolution of 360/8192 degrees per pixel (roughly 3.75 × 4.9 km at 40°N). The maps are global equirectangular projections centered on (0°, 0°), with white = 100% obscuration and black = 0%. The sharp borders are the terminator (the day-night line). The complete dataset can be downloaded as a single .zip file (196 MB). On an ordinary day, the insolation — the amount of sunlight hitting a given spot on the Earth — is proportional to the sine of the Sun's altitude. When the Sun is 30° above the horizon, the sunlight energy per square meter is half of what it is when the Sun is directly overhead. This relationship is the reason that the tropics are hot and the poles are cold. Combined with day length, it's also the reason for the difference in temperature between the seasons at temperate latitudes.As this animation shows, the Moon's shadow dramatically, if temporarily, affects insolation in the continental United States during the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. The effect is readily apparent to observers in the path of totality. As the umbra passes overhead, the temperature drops by several degrees. The cooled column of air within the shadow cone can even influence cloud formation and the speed and direction of the wind.The insolation map in the animation combines solar altitude with obscuration, the fraction of the Sun's area blocked by the Moon during the eclipse. It ignores a number of other factors, including atmospheric scattering, refraction, and cloud cover, that also play a role in the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground. Related pages

LEAD: During the solar eclipse a NASA camera captured the moon's shadow cross the surface of the earth. 1. This animation was assembled from 13 images acquired on March 9, 2016, by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC).2. The shadow of the Moon starts over the Indian Ocean and marches past Indonesia and Australia into the open waters and islands of Oceania (Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia).3. The camera is onboard the DSCOVR satellite located 1 million miles from Earth toward the Sun. TAG: DSCOVR’s primary mission is to monitor the solar wind for space weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its secondary mission is to provide daily color views of our planet as it rotates through the day. For More InformationSee [http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=87675](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=87675) Related pages

The Moon moves right to left in its orbit around the Earth. The shadow it casts hits the Earth during the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. A print-resolution still image showing the Earth, Moon, and Sun at 17:05:40 UTC during the August 21, 2017 eclipse. The image is 12 × 9 inches at 300 DPI. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, casting its shadow on the Earth. The shadow comprises two concentric cones called the umbra and the penumbra. Observers on the Earth who are within the smaller, central umbra see the Sun completely blocked. Within the larger penumbra, the Sun is only partially blocked.In this animation, the Earth, Moon, Sun, and shadow cones are viewed through a telescopic lens on a virtual camera located far behind the Earth. Long focal lengths like the one used here appear to compress the distance between near and far objects. Despite appearances, the geometry of the scene is correct. The Moon's umbra cone is roughly 30 Earth diameters long, barely enough to reach the Earth, while the Sun is almost 400 times farther away.From this perspective, we see the night sides of both the Earth and the Moon. Solar eclipses can only occur during New Moon, when the entire Earth-facing side of the Moon is experiencing nighttime darkness. Related pages

A view of the United States during the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, showing the umbra (black oval), penumbra (concentric shaded ovals), and path of totality (red) through or very near several major cities. A view of the United States during the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, showing the umbra (black oval), penumbra (concentric shaded ovals), and path of totality (red). This version omits the city and state names and the statistics display. A view of the United States during the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, showing the umbra (black oval), penumbra (concentric shaded ovals), and path of totality (red). This version includes images of the Sun showing its appearance in a number of locations, each oriented to the local horizon. On Monday, August 21, 2017, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun, casting its shadow across all of North America. This will be the first total solar eclipse visible in the contiguous United States in 38 years.The Moon's shadow can be divided into areas called the umbra and the penumbra. Within the penumbra, the Sun is only partially blocked, and observers experience a partial eclipse. The much smaller umbra lies at the very center of the shadow cone, and anyone there sees the Moon entirely cover the Sun in a total solar eclipse.In the animation, the umbra is the small black oval. The red streak behind this oval is the path of totality. Anyone within this path will see a total eclipse when the umbra passes over them. The much larger shaded bullseye pattern represents the penumbra. Steps in the shading denote different percentages of Sun coverage (eclipse magnitude), at levels of 90%, 75%, 50% and 25%. The yellow and orange contours map the path of the penumbra. The outermost yellow contour is the edge of the penumbra path. Outside this limit, no part of the Sun is covered by the Moon.The numbers in the lower left corner give the latitude and longitude of the center of the umbra as it moves eastward, along with the altitude of the Sun above the horizon at that point. Also shown is the duration of totality: for anyone standing at the center point, this is how long the total solar eclipse will last. Note that the duration varies from just 2 minutes on the West Coast to 2 minutes 40 seconds east of the Mississippi River.About AccuracyYou might think that calculating the circumstances of an eclipse would be, if not easy, then at least precise. If you do the math correctly, you’d expect to get exactly the same answers as everyone else. But the universe is more subtle than that. The Earth is neither smooth nor perfectly spherical, nor does it rotate at a perfectly constant, predictable speed. The Moon isn’t smooth, either, which means that the shadow it casts isn’t a simple circle. And our knowledge of the size of the Sun is uncertain by a factor of about 0.2%, enough to affect the duration of totality by several seconds.Everyone who performs these calculations will make certain choices to simplify the math or to precisely define an imperfectly known number. The choices often depend on the goals and the computing resources of the calculator, and as you'd expect, the results will differ slightly. You can get quite good results with a relatively simple approach, but it sometimes takes an enormous effort to get only slightly better answers.The following table lists some of the constants and data used for this animation.Earth radius6378.137 kmEarth flattening1 / 298.257 (the WGS 84 ellipsoid)Moon radius1737.4 km (k = 0.2723993)Sun radius696,000 km (959.634 arcsec at 1 AU)EphemerisDE 421Earth orientationearth_070425_370426_predict.bpc (ΔT corrected)Delta UTC68.184 seconds (TT – TAI + 36 leap seconds)A number of sources explain Bessel’s method of solar eclipse calculation, including chapter 9 of Astronomy on the Personal Computer by Oliver Montenbruck and Thomas Pflager and the eclipses chapter of The Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac. The method was adapted to the routines available in NAIF's SPICE software library.The value for the radius of the Moon is slightly larger than the one used by Fred Espenak and slightly smaller than the one used by the Astronomical Almanac. The Sun radius is the one used most often, but see figure 1 in M. Emilio et al., Measuring the Solar Radius from Space during the 2003 and 2006 Mercury Transits for a sense of the uncertainty in this number.Both the elevations of locations on the Earth and the irregular limb of the Moon were ignored. The resulting small errors mostly affect the totality duration calculation, but they tend to cancel out—elevations above sea level slightly lengthen totality, while valleys along the lunar limb slightly shorten it. The effect on the rendered images is negligible (smaller than a pixel).Another minor complication that's ignored here is the difference between the Moon's center of mass (the position reported in the ephemeris) and its center of figure (the center of the disk as seen from Earth). These two centers don't exactly coincide because the Moon's mass isn't distributed evenly, but the difference is quite small, about 0.5 kilometers. Related pages