The blue sky gets ripped away, and you can actually stare toward the center of the solar system, see the planets, see the stars in the background - the brighter ones.

During a total solar eclipse, when the moon completely blocks the face of the sun and it goes dark in the middle of the day, that is the only time when it actually is safe to look up toward the sun with the naked eye. A total eclipse is completely different from anything else you've ever experienced, including a partial solar eclipse. SIMON: What did that set off in you? What did you see?īARON: Well, so a total solar eclipse, nothing can prepare you for it. It was the most awe-inspiring, I dare say spiritual experience, I've ever had. I saw my first total eclipse in Aruba in 1998.

SIMON: Before we get into this book, you're kind of an eclipse fanatic, aren't you?īARON: Oh, yeah. David, thanks so much for being back with us.ĭAVID BARON: Hello, Scott, it's my pleasure. David Baron now joins us from Colorado Public Radio in Denver. David, who used to be a science reporter here at NPR, has written 'American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race To Catch The Shadow Of The Moon And Win The Glory Of The World.' It's the story of the total eclipse that occurred on July 29, 1878. David Baron has been preparing for it for almost 20 years. This will be the first total eclipse of the sun to pass over the continental United States since 1918. A total solar eclipse will sweep across the country. Had the tasimeter worked, the scattering of sunlight that we see as the inner corona would have misleadingly given Edison the Sun's surface temperature, 6,000 ☌.On August 21, millions of Americans will look up into the sky - with the proper eye protection, we hope. It wasn't until around 1940 that physicists Walter Grotrian, Bengt Edlén and Hannes Alfvén found the solar corona to have a temperature of at least 1 million ☌. He was unprepared for the strength of the signal, however, and his instrument's needle pinned at its maximum reading. Edison brought one of his devices, a tasimeter, to measure minute shifts in heat from the Sun's corona during the eclipse. But, as Baron relates, 31-year-old whizz-kid inventor Thomas Edison gained the lion's share of publicity, even though he was just tagging along. Nelson Nature 539, 491–492 2016), travelled to Rawlins, Wyoming, to witness it.

(I read this book in draft and provided a blurb.) A group of eminent scientists, including astronomer Henry Draper and his wife, Anna (see S. In American Eclipse, journalist David Baron harks back to the total eclipse visible in the United States in July 1878.

American eclipse baron