Photo voltaic eclipse 2024: Making the among the tournament

It's not just rosan and Kurt we've got a special guest joining us right now to talk about the big day the solar eclipse everybody's been talking about it the rare Celestial event will spread over 100 miles across New York state for viewing so the eclipse is going to cause total darkness for up to four minutes depending on where you are in New York.

Joining us to help us understand how this phenomenon will take place is Mark Taylor the senior manager of the Hudson River Museum nice to have you here uh I'm very happy to be here well I got to ask you like people keep calling this the nerd Super Bowl yes is it um there are people who travel the entire world to see eclipses we have a former.

Employee at the Museum who has said that she no longer uses the word awesome to refer to anything other than a solar eclip I know you've brought some beautiful uh props here do you want to explain it to us okay all I wanted to show was to give people a sense of what's Happening sort of behind the scenes so here we have the Earth so if.

You want to hold that love and here's the the moon rather want hold the earth the earth okay now this is the right relative size the Earth is about four times wider than the moon is but because the sun even though it's really large is very very far away they look like they're the same size as seen from the earth so the Moon is 400 times smaller.

But the sun is 400 times farther away now if we wanted to do the actual scale of how far apart they are from each other so I'm going to need you to walk out onto the street okay I'll be back go back okay okay it's okay but that's how far away uh well at least maybe not quite but the shadow is cast and as the moon orbits and the Earth turns you end.

Up getting a curved track along the surface of the Earth look what I'm doing there you go don't dip it though I can see you doing that you know it's one of those things you call it the nerd Super Bowl but I love the math aspect of it because it is the the Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun but because of the distance they wind up looking like the.

Same size when it crosses in between and explain to people because I think when you're in you know 8th grade science or maybe fifth grade science you remember the relationship between the Sun and the Earth and the moon but you kind of forget it over time why exactly this happens okay it happens because the orbit of the moon around the earth is.

Like this and the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is like this because they're almost in the same plane you can get the moon passing between us and the sun if the orbit of the moon was tilted like this then eclipses would be much more rare but because they almost line up it happens more often and no other planet has eclipses quite like the Earth.

So count yourself lucky there all right Mark now time for stupid questions okay so you need these sunglasses eclipse glasses not sunglasses okay eclipse glasses at what point you need them like for example I'm going to be with Kurt uh part of the day and then after we do our thing I'm going to be walking home right do I need to be.

Walking with the eclip glasses on the entire time no because then you will bump into something okay you won't be able to see the only thing that you can see through these is the sun nothing else is bright enough really so at what point do I really need to have these on if you want to look at the sun because the sun is.

Not going to be completely covered up by the Moon from where we are you will need those okay or there's some other ways you can view it too you can also use a card with a pin hole poked in it I have a piece of foil here because it makes the hole nice and neat okay and then what you do is you just basically the sun's up there you project and you'll.

See a little crescent so any piece of cart any piece of paper with a little hole in it right in fact many people in their house probably have this Precision Optical instrument a calendar or we call it an our house is schoolab Basta yes you can take your schoolab Basta and hold it up and you will see lots of little.

Crescents on the floor so you do not need anything fancy just make sure that if you do want to look directly at the sun you're going to use something like this to keep you safe and look for other effects look for the Shadows to act a little funny they're going to look strange sharp in some directions and others so um yeah there there are.

Effects to see you'll notice animals acting a little strange do people act strange well people act strange in terms of paying $600 for a hotel room yes okay and traveling around the world to see it there's another one what's it every year somewhere on the planet um about once every year and a half there are some years that have.

Maybe one or two eclipes every now and then there's a year that has more than that but roughly every year and a half so there's going to be a good one in 2026 which will be visible from Western Iceland if you like volcanoes go to Iceland get a picture of an eclipse with a volcano in the same picture okay and then in 2028 there's going to be one.

Which will be visible from south of Indonesia across Australia and New Zealand so if you want to get a picture of yourself holding a wabby with the hey these sounds like good vacation plans to me where you going to be where am I going to be I hope to see today oh today today I'm going to be up at the Hudson River Museum which is up in Yonkers and.

Is there are are they doing anything special there yeah well we have uh solar telescopes which we're setting up and we have various ways to view the eclipse including projecting things off of a mirror like this you have a lot of fancy gadgets um not very fancy yeah you can get them all at home or you can go up to the museum and watch it with you thank.

You so much Mark okay appreciate it thank you

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