Monthly Archives: June 2017

With the right apps installed, your phone becomes a powerful pocket toolkit for your astronomy hobby. Its GPS, compass and gyro sensors help to level and align your telescope, apps such as Astronomy Tools Night Sky provide cloud cover maps and more, and the Observer Pro-Astronomy Planner app indicates the best times to see particular objects.

The phone in your pocket is a veritable Swiss Army knife of functionality for both casual stargazers and serious astronomers. In this edition of Mobile Astronomy, we'll look at the ways your phone, when loaded with the right apps, can enhance your astronomy hobby as you plan your observing sessions, set up your telescope, record your observations and much more.

Your phone's usefulness for astronomy starts well before you pack up your telescope or cameras and leave the house. It can help you find and navigate to an observing site. It also lets you check the location's weather forecast to decide whether to make the drive.

When seeking a new dark observing site, I like to consult light pollution maps. The Dark Site Finder website uses a Google Maps interface overlaid with color-coded light pollution data. White, red and orange tones indicate extremely light-polluted areas that are poor for skywatching. Yellow means moderate light pollution, and green through black indicate the darkest skies. You can pan and zoom in and out on the map to find darker skies within a reasonable driving distance (or check the skies at your upcoming vacation spot). [A Planet Skywatching Guide for 2017: When, Where & How to See The Planets]

The Dark Site Finder website overlays worldwide light pollution data onto Google Maps. Red and white zones indicate skies with bad light pollution in urban areas while blues and grays indicate nearly pristine dark skies. The map can be zoomed and searched to find dark sky areas close to your location.

State and national parks are usually good bets for pristine skies, but you should check their after-dark policies for visitors. For privately held property, you must get permission from the owner (preferably during the daytime). They'll often be happy to host you and a few friends if you are quiet, leave the area as you found it and offer to show them a few objects.

If you are traveling to a remote location, be sure to file a "flight plan" with loved ones, and use your phone to confirm that you've arrived safely. Your stock Maps app will navigate you to a new observing site. But consider downloading the area as an offline map while you're still home, in case the cell coverage is spotty or nonexistent on-site.

Your usual weather forecasting app will tell you whether it's cloudy or clear, as well as the temperature and the chance of rain. But for observing, other factors are important, too. How steady will the air be? Rough air makes stars twinkle and blurs the view. Will the air be heavy with moisture and hazy, or dry and transparent? Will your telescope or camera become coated with dew?

The free Clear Outside app for Android and iOS provides nearly everything a skywatcher will need to know about the observing conditions. In a graphical format, it shows predicted hourly cloud-cover values, visibility (i.e., sky transparency), and the likelihood of fog, rain, wind and frost. It indicates when the sky will be fully dark after sunset and before sunrise, the contribution of moonlight, and even when the International Space Station will fly overhead!

Other favorites the free Clear Sky Droid app for Android and iCSC: Clear Sky Chart Viewer app for iOS use the popular Clear Dark Sky website. Both let you select from a list of weather station sites throughout North America. They provide an hourly breakdown, in a graphical format, of the cloud cover, transparency, seeing, darkness, wind, humidity and temperature for the next 48 hours. Note that the information is based on future weather models that are updated only about twice per day, not in real time.

The Clear Dark Sky astronomy forecasting website, developed by Attilla Danko, provides at-a-glance indicators for sky quality (seeing, transparency, cloud cover and darkness) and observing conditions on the ground (wind, humidity and temperature) for the next 48 hours for hundreds of locations throughout North America. Mobile apps such as Clear Sky Droid and iCSC: Clear Sky Chart put the site's information in your pocket.

The free Astronomy Tools Night Sky app for Android does even more than weather. It details cloud cover, sends aurora and meteor shower alerts, includes built-in light pollution maps, describes moon position, and more. The paid Scope Nights: Astronomy Weather and Dark Sky Map for iOS analyzes the weather and rates the stargazing up to 10 nights in advance, issues alerts when conditions are great, and more. For real-time weather conditions, look at the NOAA Weather Radar app for Android and iOS. It provides animated satellite imagery of cloud cover and precipitation for most of the world.

Telescopes with equatorial mounts, and most motorized GoTo and tracking systems, need to be set up level and aligned with the Earth's polar axis. The better they are aligned, the more accurate the tracking and GoTos will be. Long-exposure astrophotographs will be sharper, too. Here's how your phone can help.

At night, the polestar (Polaris, or the North Star) can be used for alignment. But if you are setting up a tracking telescope to observe the sun or a nighttime scope before it's dark enough to see Polaris or if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is no polestar to align on it helps to have a compass app handy. There are plenty of free ones. You need to set up based on true north, not magnetic north. The better compass apps will include what's called a declination correction for this.

To level the telescope tripod, install a bubble level app, and simply rest your phone on the eyepiece tray or another part of the mount. Find an app that levels in two directions simultaneously, such as a circular bubble level, and that buzzes when levelness is achieved so that you can adjust the tripod legs without needing to see the phone's display.

The polar (or right ascension) axis of equatorial mounts need to be tilted at the angle equal to your latitude on Earth. Pick a bubble level app such as Bubble for Android or Bubble Level for iPhone and iPad that has a digital readout of the tilt. Then, use it to check the angle of the telescope's tube, or the polar axis directly. (For mounts that have counterweight shafts, you can hold the phone against it. The shaft should be tilted at 90 degrees minus your latitude.)

Remember that your device's compass and gyroscope need to be calibrated properly. Bubble level apps have options to zero the reading when your phone is resting on a horizontal surface. Compass apps will have instructions to sweep your phone in a pattern that corrects the magnetic readings. Be sure to avoid standing near metal objects, such as your car, when doing this. Another good option is to check your phone's tilt and compass readings on a telescope that you know is already aligned, using the polestar.

Designed for hiking and other activities outdoors, the Polaris GPS Navigation App is also handy for astronomers for setting up and aligning a telescope. The app displays the position and time data from your device's GPS receiver, as well as the compass bearing.

Finally, computerized telescope mounts also need to know the correct time and observing location so that they can calculate where the stars are. Your phone's GPS sensor measures these, but there isn't always an easy way to access the values. I find that a good hiking or navigating app, such as DS Software's free Polaris GPS Navigation for Android, offers everything you'll need, including a compass. [June Full Moon 2017: How to See the Strawberry Minimoon]

In past editions of Mobile Astronomy, we've covered the many ways in which astronomy sky chart apps can help you identify things in the sky and locate particular objects. They also provide many details about these sights. Many astronomy enthusiasts like to keep a record, or observing log, of what they have seen over the years. Some chase down certain objects in order to earn observing certificates from astronomy clubs or societies, and some prefer to observe certain types of objects. (I like planetary nebulas!) There are also specific types of observations, such as variable star brightness estimates, that you can submit as a citizen scientist.

SkySafari 5, Night Sky Tools and other apps include additional functionality for creating observing lists. Set the app to the date and time you'll be observing, and use the search function to find the objects of interest. Alternatively, you might need to view a particular target in an observing certificate program. The app can show you the best time to see it.

To make an observing list in SkySafari 5, open the Search menu, scroll to the bottom and tap the Create New Observing List option. You'll be prompted for a name. Exit this menu, and select a celestial object by tapping it on the display. Tap the Info icon. (You can also do this by using the object's name in the search menu.) In the lower right of the information panel, tap the More icon. A dialog box will appear. Select Add to Observing List, and tap the list you created. Later, you can sort, edit and manage the objects in the list. You can also make multiple lists. There are also dozens of publicly available observing lists you can import from the Online Repository.

Traditionally, observations were recorded in a paper logbook. But your phone makes this far easier. You can log a description of an object using the voice recorder on your phone as you peer into the eyepiece. You can type into a note-taking app. Or, better yet, you can use an astronomy app with logging functionality.

For instance, you can log your observations of your observing-list objects in the SkySafari 5 app. In the object's information page, tap More and select Create New Observation. The app will launch a form where you can enter the date, time and location (some are autofilled), your notes, the equipment you used, and the seeing and transparency rating for the night. The Night Sky Tools app for Android provides similar functionalities, and even allows for filters or cameras.

The SkySafari 5 app includes functions to create observing lists and log observations, including the date, time, location, equipment used and sky conditions.

Finally, the Observer Pro Astronomy Planner for iOS app lets you plan your sessions, make observing lists and log observations. It even lets you map the horizon profile of your observing site to determine when objects will be visible for example, high enough to clear the neighbor's garage roof all for about $10.

Telescope owners find it helpful to know the magnifications and fields of view produced by their various eyepieces. A good tip is to calculate the values and save them in a document on the phone. Or, use an app designed just for that! The AstroAid app for iOS lets you select from preloaded commercial telescopes, eyepieces and accessories. Then, it can calculate all of the values, and even generate previews for many of the major deep-sky objects.

The AstroAid app for iOS allows you to select from a list of provided telescopes and eyepieces that match your own setup. It then generates observing previews of major deep sky targets to assist in planning your observing or astrophotography session. It can also help you decide what equipment to buy because you can experiment with different combinations of apertures, focal lengths and other parameters.

Everyone approaches astronomy their own way. When I'm not chatting with folks, I like to listen to music when I observe, and my smartphone is loaded with plenty of inspiring tracks for that. If you do the same, be sure you aren't bothering your fellow observers or disturbing sleepers in the middle of the night. For safety, avoid using earbuds when observing alone in an unfamiliar place.

You don't need to be an expert astrophotographer to capture a memento of your night under the stars. In How to Snap Awesome Photos of Night-Sky Objects with Your Smartphone, we covered how to capture images of astronomical targets using your phone. Astronomy outreach and education events are perfect opportunities to engage students and the public in astronomy by sharing their excitement and images on social media. And, hey, why not tweet or text an invitation to your next observing session? We'd love to join you!

If you have found other ways to use your phone for astronomy, feel free to send me a note or share them in the comments. In a future edition of Mobile Astronomy, we'll cover how to wirelessly control your telescope with your phone, highlight some early summer celestial treats, and more. Until then, keep looking up!

Editor's note: Chris Vaughan is an astronomy public outreach and education specialist, and operator of the historic 1.88-meter David Dunlap Observatory telescope. You can reach him via email, and follow him on Twitter @astrogeoguy, as well as on Facebook and Tumblr.

This article was provided by Simulation Curriculum, the leader in space science curriculum solutions and the makers of the SkySafari app for Android and iOS. Follow SkySafari on Twitter @SkySafariAstro. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Turn Your Smartphone into an Astronomy Toolbox with Mobile Apps - Space.com

Research | Science | Technology | UW Today blog

June 2, 2017

LIGO has discovered a new population of black holes with masses that are larger than what had been seen before with X-ray studies alone (purple).LIGO/Caltech/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)

The announcement that a third collision of black holes has been detected three billion light years away validates the work of hundreds of scientists, including teams at the University of Washington and UW Bothell.

The discovery was made using a detector located at Hanford in eastern Washington and its twin in Louisiana, together known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). This new window in astronomy observes ripples in space and time, as predicted by Albert Einstein. The first two waves generated by the merger of two black holes were detected in 2015. The third, detected in January, is described in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Recently, the UW teams have made a significant instrumental contribution to LIGOs second Observing Run by installing ultra-sensitive tiltmeters at the LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO), one of the two LIGO observatories in the U.S. These tiltmeters improve the isolation of LIGO from ground motion, thus increasing the duty cycle of LHO under adverse environmental conditions, such as high wind and high ground motion.

Despite 20 mph winds on Jan. 4, the improved seismic isolation at LHO helped identify the nearly simultaneous gravitational-wave signal seen at the two LIGO observatories. Those gravitational-wave signals, which lasted less than a second in the detector, are believed to be from the merger of black holes with masses about 31 and 19 times the mass of the sun, which happened at a distance of more than 3 billion light years. Energy equivalent to twice the mass of the sun was radiated as gravitational waves.

UW Bothell students are working with scientists at the LIGO Hanford Observatory on data quality and contributing to searches for other gravitational wave sources, said Joey Key, assistant professor of physics at UW Bothell, one of the authors of the paper.

This figure shows reconstructions of the three confident and one candidate (LVT151012) gravitational wave signals detected by LIGO to date, including the most recent detection GW170104.LIGO/Caltech

LIGO is opening up a new way to explore our universe, including populations of elusive black holes, Key said. This is a significant discovery of a new black hole collision, adding to our map of black hole systems and utilizing the increased sensitivity of the LIGO detectors.

Key leads the UW Bothell LIGO Scientific Collaboration group, which includes lecturer Matt DePies and students Andrew Clark, Holly Gummelt, Paul Marsh, Jomardee Perkins and Katherine Reyes. Physics professor Jens Gundlach, graduate student Michael Ross and Krishna Venkateswara, assistant professor of physics, comprise the LIGO Scientific Collaboration group at the UW in Seattle.

With the detection of a third binary black hole merger, LIGO continues to expand our knowledge about the nature of these events, their astrophysical origins and about the fundamental nature of gravity, Venkateswara said. LIGO is allowing us to hear the sounds of the universe and many more exciting symphonies await discovery.

The UW research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

LIGO is funded by the NSF and operated by MIT and Caltech, which conceived and built the project. Financial support for the Advanced LIGO project was led by NSF with Germany (Max Planck Society), the U.K. (Science and Technology Facilities Council) and Australia (Australian Research Council) making significant commitments and contributions to the project. More than 1,000 scientists from around the world participate in the effort through the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which includes the GEO Collaboration. LIGO partners with the Virgo Collaboration, a consortium including 280 additional scientists throughout Europe supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), and Nikhef, as well as Virgos host institution, the European Gravitational Observatory. Additional partners are listed at: http://ligo.org/partners.php

For more information, contact Joey Key at UW Bothell at 425-352-5497 or joeykey@uw.edu, or Krishna Venkateswara at 301-395-8750 or kvenk@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: NSF 1607385 and 1505861.

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UW, UW Bothell scientists explain new discovery in gravitational wave astronomy - UW Today

Zooniverse is a revolutionary citizen science initiative led by Chicagos Adler Planetarium and the University of Oxford. The platform hosts a wide range of projects that allow anyone, of any age and background, to engage in current ongoing scientific research in a fun, understandable, and simple way. On May 31, Zooniverse launched its 100th project on its 10th anniversary: Galaxy Nurseries, a hunt for young galaxies in the distant universe, which were forming stars about 5 to 7 billion years ago. And the Galaxy Nurseries team has an ambitious goal complete Zooniverses 100th project in 100 hours. The clock is ticking, but theres still plenty of time left; if youre interested in exploring the early universe and lending your eye to identify these amazing objects, consider taking a little time this weekend to make some classifications of your own. Searching for young galaxies Galaxy Nurseries takes advantage of a unique dataset provided by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as part of the WFC3 IR Spectroscopic Parallel (WISP) survey. When searching for young, star-forming galaxies in the early universe, simply taking an image is not enough. To get more information, these images not only provide a classical picture of everything in a given field of view, but also a spectrum for every single object Hubble can spot. A spectrum is essentially the result of passing light from an object, such as a star or galaxy, through a prism, which breaks the light apart by wavelength. As the light is spread out, it gives clues about the objects nature. In particular, star-forming galaxies will show features called emission lines. Emission lines indicate material such as gas that is glowing brightly, and only hot stars are capable of producing the radiation needed to excite nearby gas enough to produce certain emission lines. Because these huge, extremely hot stars dont last very long (in the cosmic scheme of things), their existence is indicative of recent star formation. And these young star-forming galaxies are exactly what the researchers behind the Galaxy Nurseries project are after. Why? There are two main reasons behind the development of the 100th Zooniverse project. First, theres the underlying science. Claudia Scarlata, a physics and astronomy associate professor at the University of Minnesota and principal investigator of the Galaxy Nurseries Zooniverse project, explained to Astronomy that these galaxies are extreme objects that are not specifically targeted for spectroscopy in most surveys. Traditionally, obtaining spectra is harder than simply taking an image it often requires more light, and can thus be challenging for such small, faraway objects. Astronomers have sometimes gotten around this problem by classifying galaxies based on their colors in images. But these galaxies have booming [emission] lines, Scarlata said, and their colors can be changed. They are often misclassified in broadband surveys, that simply look at the color of the light coming from objects in an image. But through the WISP survey, we have a spectrum of every object in the Hubble field of view, Scarlata says. Armed with this information, these objects now have spectra that can be analyzed, helping researchers such as Scarlata and her colleagues study star formation in the distant universe. There are several questions the team is looking to answer. How are these galaxies forming stars over time? What is their environment like? Are they isolated or found in groups? Are they dusty, or not? (Current research, Scarlata says, indicates the latter.) What type of metals (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) do these galaxies have? Averaging a large number of objects can give you the numbers you need, Scarlata says, to start characterizing these young galaxies, which have been previously studied only in very small samples. But, Scarlata says, there will be contaminants, such as active galactic nuclei, Milky Way stars, and even gravitational lenses. The goal of Galaxy Nurseries is to screen out these contaminants by showing volunteers what to look for, then letting them loose on the most promising data to determine whether the detection is real or spurious. But even these contaminants hold scientific value. While the initial goal of Galaxy Nurseries is to identify these young galaxies, Scarlata says that volunteers will undoubtedly find new and strange objects during the search. Were also looking for the unexpected, she says, and we will follow up on everything, even if its not the galaxies were looking for. Improving how science is done The second reason Galaxy Nurseries is so important is the potential it holds to make searching for galaxies and other scientific objectives and more accurate in the future. Specifically, there are two upcoming missions that will use similar techniques to find objects of interest: the NASA/ESA Euclid mission and NASAs WFIRST telescope. The work that volunteers put into Galaxy Nurseries, Scarlata says, will help us determine what works, what doesnt, and where the volunteers are needed most. For example, Euclid will gather similar data, but WISP has covered something like half a degree of the sky. Euclid will look at 15,000 square degrees thats an area 30,000 times larger than WISP, she says. Thus, the information gained from Galaxy Nurseries and the other projects hosted on Zooniverse will pave the way for not only better machine learning to increase real detections in these larger datasets, but also improve projects ability to utilize citizen science volunteers even more efficiently and beneficially in the future. Thats the magic of Zooniverse, says Michelle Larson, the president and CEO of the Adler Planetarium. Zooniverse continues to push itself. Its about scientific progress. As volunteers put their time into the various projects offered, it allows researchers and software developers alike to improve upon the aspects of science that machines can handle, as well as continually zooming in on the tasks that only humans can perform. Coming full circle Galaxy Nurseries is also a fitting 100th project for Zooniverse. The origin of the Zooniverse platform itself lies in the Galaxy Zoo project, launched in 2007. Thus, a 100th project brings the concept full circle; Were going back to the origin. It started with galaxies, and now its coming back to galaxies, Scarlata says. Galaxy Zoo was born from the need to parse through a huge volume of data in a reasonable way, which would have been unfeasible for one person or even several working together. And the response was overwhelming, Chris Lintott, an astronomer currently at the University of Oxford who is the co-founder of both Galaxy Zoo and Zooniverse told Astronomy. Galaxy Zoo was not supposed to still be running 10 years later, Lintott says. But it is and Zooniverse projects have been responsible for some amazing discoveries, including Hanny's Voorwerp and an exoplanetary system with four super Earths. And, if youve read about the third successful detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) thats currently topping science news, you might also be interested in checking out another Zooniverse project: Gravity Spy, which allows citizen scientists to help gravitational wave researchers filter out glitches in the data so that real signals can be found more easily. Zooniverse projects have produced over 100 peer-reviewed science publications, and there are currently more than 1.5 million registered users from around the world participating in projects that largely focus on astronomy, but also include biology, climate science, history, language, literature, medicine, and animal behavior. Whether you want to find exoplanets, count wildebeest in the Serengeti, or further research on cellular structure, theres a Zooniverse project for you. Zooniverse is inclusive, stresses Lintott. Its about discoveries we can make together.

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Are you ready to find baby galaxies? | Astronomy.com - Astronomy Magazine

When stars are swallowed by a supermassive black hole, do they go out like a candle or crash into a solid surface? The first option upholds general relativity as is, while the second relies on a modified version of this famous theory. Now, a group of astronomers has found a way to study what happens at a black holes event horizon, even though there are no images of this region of space. Their findings? General relativity is safe.

Pawan Kumar of The University of Texas at Austin, along with his graduate student Wenbin Lu and colleague Ramesh Narayan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, found a unique way to determine just what happens to stars as they approach extremely massive objects i.e., black holes. Their results are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Nearly every galaxy in the universe, including our own, has a central massive object at its center. These massive objects are assumed to be supermassive black holes several millions or even billions of times the mass of our Sun. This is because according to general relativity, objects of a certain mass cannot be held up by any known force, and thus collapse into black holes.

Black holes are singularities with no physical surface area, surrounded by an event horizon. The event horizon acts like a one-way membrane material can fall in toward the black hole, but once it passes the event horizon, it can no longer send out light that is visible to the rest of the universe because the gravity of the black hole pulls the light back toward itself. Once past the event horizon, the material, in essence, disappears from view.

But what if general relativity isnt quite right? What if, instead, these central massive objects arent collapsed down to a point? If that were the case, the event horizon would have different properties. Kumar and his colleagues theorized that if the central massive object is not a black hole, then the event horizon would not act like a one-way membrane, but like some kind of solid surface against which any infalling material would smash. This would produce a visible effect as the infalling stars gas lit up as a result of the collision, enveloping the massive object and glowing visibly for months or even years.

Our whole point here is to turn this idea of an event horizon into an experimental science, and find out if event horizons really do exist or not, said Kumar in a press release announcing their results.

To test these competing ideas, the team turned to observations taken with the 1.8-meter Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii over the course of 3.5 years. By calculating how many stars should fall onto supermassive black holes in the nearby universe, the group could determine how many events they should see over the course of the 3.5 years the survey was active. If they saw signs of this theorized glow, it would signal that the event horizon was solid; if not, it would mean that general relativity is correct, and stars simply pass the event horizon and go dark.

Given the rate of stars falling onto black holes and the number density of black holes in the nearby universe, we calculated how many such transients Pan-STARRS should have detected over a period of operation of 3.5 years. It turns out it should have detected more than 10 of them, if the hard-surface theory is true, explained Lu.

Why is there any debate at all? Currently, telescopes are not able to resolve the region immediately around a compact object to directly observe the event horizon and its properties. But astronomers are continually pushing the boundaries of their instruments, seeking better, closer-in images of black holes.

The Event Horizon Telescope, a combination of several observatories, made its first observations of the area surrounding a supermassive black hole in April, though these data are still undergoing image processing and evaluation.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, currently under construction, will perform surveys like those taken with the Pan-STARRS telescope, but with significantly greater sensitivity to events like the glow that would be left behind by collisions with a solid surface event horizon.

Because of this lack of direct evidence, the event horizon has remained mysterious in nature. And according to Kumar, Our motive is not so much to establish that there is a hard surface, but to push the boundary of knowledge and find concrete evidence that really, there is an event horizon around black holes.

After poring through the data returned from the Pan-STARRS telescope, Kumars group found no afterglow signature of any collisions.

In this case, a lack of signal is a good thing, if you support general relativity. Said Narayan, Our work implies that some, and perhaps all, black holes have event horizons and that material really does disappear from the observable universe when pulled into these exotic objects, as weve expected for decades. General relativity has passed another critical test.

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How do stars die when they fall into a supermassive black hole? - Astronomy Magazine

ALBERT LEA An Albert Lea High School educator is determined to spread the word about a total solar eclipse that will confuse nature at the end of summer.

On the first day of school this coming fall, Ken Fiscus, an earth and energy science teacher, will not be in school. He will be en route to a better view of the Great American Eclipse.

It is finally here, Fiscus said. The educator has not seen a total solar eclipse in 19 years.

Fiscus will travel to Pawnee County, Nebraska, where he grew up, to feast his eyes on the solar event at 1:03 p.m. Central Time on Aug. 21.

The 2017 total eclipse will only be visible for two minutes and 35 seconds.

A total eclipse, as Fiscus explained Tuesday night at the ALHS auditorium to a group of astronomy enthusiasts, is when the sun is completely blocked by Earths orbiting moon. This happens when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun at the exact right moment and angle, thereby totally or partially blocking someone on Earths view of the sun.

A total eclipse has not been visible from the United States since 1998 and after the Aug. 21 event, a total eclipse will not be visible again from the United States until 2024, Fiscus explained.

Fiscus has only seen two other total solar eclipses in his lifetime as an astronomy enthusiast. He traveled to Mexico in 1991 and Aruba in 1998 to see the rare events.

Albert Lea and its surrounding communities will not be as greatly affected by the solar event as some other Americans.

A total eclipse can only be seen from a certain strip of the United States. The strip is about 70 miles wide and will stretch from Oregon on the West Coast to South Carolina on the East Coast.

The closer people travel to the center of the strip, the darker the sky will become and the more vibrant and longer the eclipse will be, Fiscus said.

In Albert Lea, Fiscus explained that on the day of the total eclipse, the sky will be an odd blue color that people have not seen before. He said colors will seem more saturated in natural light, shimmering lines will cover the ground, contrast will be greater to the eye, shadows will be extremely crisp and the temperature will drop.

During a total eclipse, daytime instantly becomes a dark twilight and only the suns rays, or corona, is visible. The darkness that falls over the Earth during a total eclipse travels at the speed of a bullet, Fiscus said. The corona, or crown of the sun, shimmers bright in the night sky.

Fiscus explained that the sky in Albert Lea will not be as dark as certain parts of the country.

This instant darkness confuses nature Fiscus said he hopes someone brings a rooster to the event so he can hear a rooster crow in the middle of the afternoon.

Animals and people alike will be astounded by the beauty of the event, Fiscus outlined in his presentation.

During the total eclipse that Fiscus witnessed in Mexico in 1991, Fiscus said that even the dolphins surrounding the cruise ship were confused by nature. In Aruba in 1998, divers specifically traveled to the eclipse event to watch the state of confusion for animals underneath the surface of the water.

There are different types of eclipses, Fiscus said, however, the total eclipse is the most rare.

More information about the eclipse or traveling to view the eclipse can be found at eclipse2017.org.

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Astronomy enthusiast gears up for total solar eclipse - Southernminn.com