Monday’s solar eclipse won’t leave eastern North Carolina in the dark, but that doesn’t mean there will be nothing to see here.
If skies are clear, local viewers can expect to see a partial eclipse of about 75 percent, said Brian Baker, deputy head of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences at Greenville and Contentnea Creek. When the moon passes between the sun and earth during the afternoon hours the majority of the sun will be blocked out — Baker described the resulting image as something like a “crescent sun.”
The museum’s Greenville location, at 226 W. Eighth St, will host a Solar Eclipse Viewing Party from 2-4:30 p.m., with the expected peak viewing time around 3:15 p.m.
“We’re not going to get totality where day will turn to night,” Baker said. “But at 75 percent, that is enough to kind of change the ambiance of the light that we are receiving. You’ll get a little more of a yellowish type of lighting all around you. Those will be some of the visual impacts.”
Baker, who studied astrophysics at Florida State University before moving to North Carolina in 2016, said next week’s event should appear much like the Aug. 21, 2017, eclipse, in which the Tar Heel State was never totally dark.
“It’s a very similar event, just a different trajectory,” he said of the path of the total eclipse, which extends from Texas to Maine. “You’ve got to go eight to 10 hours away to view it (a total eclipse) from here. In 2017, it was much closer to us. You could travel just a few hours away down to Columbia, South Carolina.”
Still, as many as 3 million people are expected to travel to one of about a dozen states where darkness will descend in the middle of the day. The reason for all the excitement is that a total solar eclipse is a relatively rare celestial happening. Prior to the 2017 event, the last time the contiguous U.S. had seen a total solar eclipse was in 1979.
Baker, who has never had the opportunity to view a total solar eclipse himself, is often asked why there is not an eclipse every month since the moon is always orbiting around the earth.
“The reason why it doesn’t happen all the time is because the moon’s orbit around the earth is tilted slightly by about 5 degrees,” he explained. “So sometimes during the new moon, it’s a little too high; sometimes it’s a little too low. It has to be a special situation where the moon is at the right phase, the new moon, and at just the right place in its orbit where it lines up perfectly with the sun.”
Viewers, likewise, have to be in the right place at the right time to catch a glimpse. Although, worldwide, a total solar eclipse may occur as often as every two or three years, the celestial events are visible from different locations around the globe.
“You could see a whole bunch of them through your lifetime; you’ve just got to travel around the world,” Baker said. “But if you’re staying put in kind of more confined region, it’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing. On average, if you’re in one spot on the Earth and you don’t move around, you could expect to have one of these total solar eclipses every 400 years.”
Experts say the next total solar eclipse in the U.S. is not due for 20 years— in 2044. Baker said that even then North Carolina will not be in the pathway of total darkness, which is expected to occur in the Southeast, more along the Gulf Coast region. North Carolinians have a better chance of viewing a total solar eclipse in the 2070s, he said.
With such a long wait it’s no wonder that the last eclipse, almost seven years ago, drew about 900 people to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences at Contentnea Creek, near Grifton, for viewing.
For this year’s event, the museum will make some telescopes available outside of the Greenville location for people to use for viewing. Greenville’s museum, which is more centrally located, was selected for this year’s event to allow people who are working or are in school a chance to stop by to catch a quick glimpse.
Although the Contentnea Creek location has a planetarium, an observatory and wide-open spaces that are conducive for star gazing, there is no real advantage to driving outside a city to view the solar eclipse, as long as sight lines are free from buildings or trees.
Baker said viewers can expect the eclipse to progress slowly with the moon just beginning to obscure the sun around 2 p.m. The maximum observable coverage should occur between 3:15 and 3:45 p.m.
The museum will have eclipse glasses available for sale. Regular sunglasses are not recommended.
“It’s always a bad idea to stare at the sun,” Baker said. “With an eclipse, there’s just a greater temptation to stare at the sun because you have this amazing celestial event taking place. The solar glasses or telescopes, they all minimize the risk for that greatly.”
The safest way to view the eclipse is indirectly, he said, which can be accomplished with something as simple as making a hole in a piece of cardboard and then using it to project the image of the eclipse onto a sheet of paper. People hoping to use their cell phones to capture images are also advised to be cautious.
“You can certainly damage the camera on your phone by pointing it at the sun,” Baker said. “The lenses will focus the light onto the CCD (charge-coupled device) chips and it can blow those out. So even with a phone you can get some kind of filter for that as well, just to protect your camera.”
Still, Baker likes to remind people that there is no danger in the eclipse itself, so there is no need for people to stay inside.
“We don’t want to create this perception that is out there that something dangerous is happening and you can’t be outside or the sun will hurt you,” he said. “The big emphasis on safety can create this misconception that there is a great danger. Really it’s going to be like any other day.”
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