SOUTH BEND Linda Marks has always had a fascination with the sky.

It began as she was growing up on the east coast. Her mother was a small airplane pilot in a time before airplanes had complex navigational systems. Pilots used the position of celestial objects constellations, planets and individual stars to navigate from origin to destination.

"I looked up in the sky a lot," said Marks, of North Liberty. "My mom would take me out and show me different things in the sky. When I was old enough, I joined Girl Scouts and they had a star badge. As you can guess, I dived right into that."

Marks will draw upon her life-long interest in gazing skyward in two weeks as she and millions of others across the nation look to the heavens to catch a glimpse of one of the rarest natural phenomenon a total solar eclipse.

It happens Aug. 21 when the moon's shadow will travel around 10,000 miles across the Earth's surface, from the middle of the Pacific Ocean across the continental United States to the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa.

Weather-permitting, all of North America will have a view of a partial eclipse, when the moon blocks a portion of the sun. In South Bend, the moon is expected to block approximately 86 percent of the sun with the maximum eclipse coming at 2:22 p.m., according to NASA.

Marks, vice president of the Michiana Astronomical Society, said she and a number of other club members will be traveling, to be under the path of totality, the area that will experience the total eclipse.

"We're spread out," she said. "We're pretty much everywhere."

It's a calculated strategy. The group doesn't want everyone bunched together in case their chosen location has less than ideal weather conditions.

Unlike a lunar eclipse, in which the earth casts a shadow across the surface of the moon that is visible to a wide swath along on Earth, a total solar eclipse is very focused.

"You have to be in exactly the right spot," said Peter Garnavich, professor and department chair of Astrophysics and Cosmology Physics at the University of Notre Dame. "It leads to a bit of excitement."

The relative rarity of a total solar eclipse also helps build excitement. There hasn't been one in the United States since Feb. 26, 1979.

This year's event is being billed as the Great American Eclipse because it will occur exclusively in the United States. When it last happened, Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States.

Starting off the coast of Oregon at 9:05 a.m. PDT, the moon's inner shadow, known as the umbra, will cast a 70-mile-wide shadow that will turn day into night across 14 states before exiting off the coast of South Carolina at 4:09 p.m. EDT.

While everyone in Indiana will be able to view a partial eclipse this go-around, there is no spot in the state that will be in the path of the total solar eclipse. For eclipse enthusiasts, there will be an opportunity a little closer to home. On April 8, 2024, the center line of a total solar eclipse will pass just south of Indianapolis. Another total solar eclipse, on Sept. 14, 2099, will place all of the South Bend region in the path of totality.

Garnavich's interest in astronomy and physics began as a boy. He witnessed a partial solar eclipse in the 1970s and received a telescope when he was in the fifth grade.

"The eclipse is what pushed me over the edge and I decided this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life," he said.

Eclipses used to provide the greatest opportunity for scientists to study the sun and learn more about it and its impacts on the Earth.

"The scientific yield is not as great as it used to be," Garnavich said. "Nowadays, there are really specialized satellites where we can continually monitor the sun and take measurements."

Jerry Hinnefeld, a professor of physics at Indiana University South Bend, said the appeal of solar eclipses now is the ability to garner interest in science and mathematics.

"It is very exciting. It's an opportunity to generate interest and enthusiasm in astronomy," Hinnefeld said. "It piques people's curiosity and gets people thinking about things they may not ordinarily think about."

Students will just be returning to the IU South Bend campus for the first day of classes when the eclipse happens, Hinnefeld said. There will be a number of activities on campus as part of welcome week festivities tied into the eclipse, including eclipse viewing from the green mall.

Though Notre Dame students don't start classes until the day after the eclipse, there will be activities there as well. Garnavich said the university will have viewers set up outside the Jordan Hall of Science for people to safely view the eclipse. The university's Digital Visualization Theater will host a simulation of the eclipse on Aug. 9 and Aug. 12.

One area organization has a unique connection that is paying dividends for the upcoming eclipse.

The Elkhart Public Library is one of 75 public libraries nationwide to partner with NASA as part of the NASA@ My Library program, a partnership between NASA, the libraries, the Ameircan Library Association and the Space Science Institute. The program offers materials and training to help the libraries lead fun, educational science, technology, engineering and mathematics-based programming.

"We were thrilled to be chosen for this program," said Allison McLean, head of young people's services at the library and the project director for the NASA grant. "The timing couldn't have been better. The eclipse will be our first big event with the program."

McLean said the library has already held one eclipse-related event for adults back in July. On Monday at 4:30 p.m., the library will host an Eclipse 101 program for kids ages 5 and up. The library is also hosting a viewing party on Aug. 21 at Central Park in downtown Elkhart, complete with eclipse glasses.

"We can see the excitement building everywhere," McLean said. "We've definitely seen an uptick in people looking for eclipse-related materials."

While most people will have to be content to view the eclipse from the ground, or view images from organizations like NASA, Dave Bohlmann, an engineer who teaches part-time at Ivy Tech Community College's South Bend campus, will have another perspective.

Bohlmann has spent the last several years sending balloons to the very edge of space. He's had four practice runs preparing for a launch the day of the eclipse from Perryville, Mo., inside the path of totality. Bohlmann's mission is simple, he's sending the balloons up to a height of 100,000 feet or more where the curvature of the earth is visible in an effort to capture images and video of the moon's shadow as it traverses the earth.

"Right now, we're just doing some final preparations," Bohlmann said. "We're almost ready."

Bohlmann's group is one of several planning to do launches from the Perryville area. In addition to amateur high altitude balloon enthusiasts like Bohlmann, there are also more than 50 NASA-funded balloons and numerous ground-based observations planned to gather a host of images and data.

After four test flights, Bohlmann knows his balloons take about two hours to get up to altitude. He's planning to launch about an hour and 40 minutes before totality in Perryville in order to make sure his balloon is in position.

"It's going to be exciting," Bohlmann said.

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Area prepares for the Great American Eclipse - South Bend Tribune