Anticipation continues to build around the Capital Region for the April 8 solar eclipse — particularly at miSci, the Museum of Science and Innovation in Schenectady.
With the possibility of viewing a near-total eclipse generating buzz across New York, miSci Astronomy Educator and Planetarium Manager Kerry Lewis said this particular convergence of moon and sun really is something special.
“One of the things that makes it so exciting is the amount of populated land that the eclipse’s path is crossing over,” Lewis said. “Compared to the last total eclipse’s path over the United States in 2017, there are going to be way more people ready to look up.”
“We will be seeing 97% of the sun covered by the face of the moon, so it’s pretty incredible,” she continued. “It’s something that only comes about because the moon is so much smaller — 400 times smaller — than the sun, but it’s also 400 times closer, too. … Compared to 2017, it also happens to be incrementally closer to Earth, which gives us a longer eclipse totality experience.”
Kerry Lewis, Astronomy Educator and Planetarium Manager at Schenectady's MiSci explains why the April 2024 solar eclipse is such a unique opportunity for the public and scientists.
Lewis indicated that an event like this offers more than just a rare sight — it also offers a rare opportunity for scientists.
“If you look back through the history of eclipses, we’ve found out a lot of different things about the universe,” she explained. “We were able to prove one of [Albert] Einstein’s big theories: general relativity. It was first experimentally proven during an eclipse because it creates this environment that is so out of the ordinary that it allows us to study different things about the sun and the sky in ways that we can’t do normally.”
Micah Tatem, 3, of Schenectady gets some help from his mother Angela Tatem while making a solar eclipse viewer at the Niskayuna Public Library Thursday, April 4, 2024.
Lewis said an eclipse allows scientists to see parts of the sun that can’t normally be seen in the course of standard viewing, scientific or otherwise. That sort of information informs our understanding of the sun itself, from its size and atmosphere to how it impacts Earth.
“When the eclipse happens, our weather is affected. Animals are affected,” Lewis said. “This gives us an understanding of how all these different areas of our life are impacted by the sun, its light, and its cycles.”
Leona Snyder, 7, left, and Bianca Snyder, 4, of Niskayuna gets some help from their mother Kelyn Snyder making a solar eclipse viewer at the Niskayuna Public Library Thursday, April 4, 2024.
The rare path of the eclipse over highly populated regions also offers a chance for regular people to contribute to the scientific potential of the event.
“With the huge number of people who are in the path of totality, this is a huge opportunity for researchers to get a lot of data — visuals and information — about this moment of totality,” Lewis explained. “Just one researcher gets three-and-a-half, four minutes max, but with information from people all across the path of totality, you get a lot more data that you can use to study this moment.”
Of course, there’s still plenty of spectacle to be found in the moment, too.
“We’re going to be experiencing this kind of total sensory experience, where the temperature is going to cool down and it’s going to get dark out prematurely. It’s going to be a pretty eerie experience,” she predicted. “If you go just a little bit away from Schenectady into the path of totality, you’ll be experiencing that in a more profound way with just this eerie white glow appearing around the sun. … Seeing something like that is something that impacts viewers in a really profound way.”