Things happening in the science community. Well have brief presentations and then open up questions here at the knew sooem, the phone lines and the social media. Eclipse2017. But everything that you hear and much more on the websites at nasa. Eclip eclipse2017. Gov. And remember nasa. Gov eclipse live. Ive got a lot on my mind here. 99 years in the making. A total Solar Eclipse across america. Were going to talk about the science. Im going to introduce our panelists and then turn it over to thomas who has joined us again and hes got interesting attire on. Hes change on me today. And of course social media, send those questions in, eclipse2017 and well get to those. So im excited about the science so let me introduce you to these incredible scientists. Thomas, back again, nice red. I think that means something there. The associate director at nasa headquarters. Angela desjardins, Principle Investigator at the eclipse ballooning project at Montana University bozeman, going out to the west coast, linda shore, executive director of the society of pacific in San Francisco, david boboltz, solar physics in the division of sines at the National Science foundation in arlington, virginia. Angela speck, she has many titles, professor of astrophysics and director of astronomy at the university of missouri columbia. Matt penn, astronomer, National Solar observe serve toir tucson, arizona. With that ill turn it over to you thomas im really excited to be part of this panel because science is such an important part of being an e cleps. Im going to kick off presentations here about specific topics. Ange angela, i would like to start with you. Talking about observing the eclipse from the edge of space. Go for it, angela. Absolutely. The goal of the eclipse ballooning project is to connect to a basic human sense of wonder by providing live footage from the edge of space. So how did this edge of space footage come about. How did the idea come about . About four years ago i was doing my daily peruse l of news and i saw a story about a pilot who accomplished the difficult task of getting his plane in just the right place at just the right time over an ocean so that his passengers could see the total Solar Eclipse from the air. My first reaction was huh, why would they do that. Why would they not just sit in a boat in the ocean and wait for the eclipse to come across. There must be Something Special about seeing the eclipse from the air. So i thought about that a little bit and thought, hmmm, if the eclipse is more interesting from the air than from the ground, what would it be like from a High Altitude balloon where you can see the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space. I did some research and i found out that one group had taken footage from a High Altitude balloon of a total Solar Eclipse before with a gopro from australia in 2012 and indeed the footage from that vantage point, seeing the shadow of the moon crossing across the earth was spectacular. If you can show the first video, please. This is some footage of some students launching High Altitude balloons. As i work with nasa education i also knew that there were over 100 student led High Altitude ballooning projects across the country. An idea occurred to me to bring these student teams together and provide awe inspiring footage to the public for the 2017 total Solar Eclipse. But i knew that for the footage to really have an impact it would have to be live. Therefore, we took the Nasa Science Mission and nasa space grant and teamed them together to create the eclipse ballooning project. A project that at the time we had no idea how to do. Nobody had ever live streamed video from one High Altitude balloon of a total Solar Eclipse before, let alone dozens across a continent. Luckily an affinity for solving problems is what draws students into science and engineering fields. If you could play the next video, please. So after a lot of hard work we have over 50 student teams from across the country ready to stream High Altitude video from dozens of locations across the path of totality, sharing inspiring imagination sparking footage with the public live. We hope you check out our footage on eclipse day. Thanks. Thanks so much, angela. And what im going to do now is kick it over to linda who is talking about taking this eclipse as an opportunity to learn and also to inspire the next generation of scientists. Linda, take it away. Hi, thanks. Its great to be here. So i wanted to talk just a little bit about not the current eclipse coming up but one from the past that was really interesting to forming my society, the Astronomical Society of the pacific. And i think its an interesting one to look at in terms of the science. Every eclipse tells scientists something new about the sun. And allows scientists to use new techniques. And this eclipse is no different and the scientist on the panel are going to talk about that. But think about eclipses prior to having photography. Eclipses were studied, the beautiful corona was observed. But you couldnt photograph. What they did is they sketched. Scientists would sketch. And i thought about that and i realized, its kind of difficult. Its pitch dark during an eclipse. You heart is races because youre excited and here you are with a pen trying to sketch the corona. But there was a eclipse in 1989, the new years day eclipse which passed through california. I didnt go coast to coast the way this one is going to. But it passed north of San Francisco and then took a curve and went through montana, the dakotas and then on into canada. On that eclipse there was a group of amateur astronomers who joined forces with a Photography Society in San Francisco. Brandnew. These were folks who got their cameras and were super excited about the new technology. They joined forces and went north into the wine country. And this slide shows one of the first grafs ever takphotographs an eclipse. This is a time exposure showing the different phases the partial phases approaching totality. Imagine how excited this photographer was to develop this plate. And for the first time ap chur the partial phases of an eclipse. This was really remarkable. And what happened after this is what is the group of amateurs and professionals went back to San Francisco a month later, shared their photographs, shared what they learned and they had such a great time forming this community that they decided that very evening to form a society, the Astronomical Society of the pacific. And while we were once a small provencal society located in San Francisco. This sour 128th year. Now were a National Society and were actually dedicated to education and outreach and helping people of every kind, whether they be children, students were teachers, professors, college teachers, rangers, girl scout leaders, everybody, learn astronomy and be able to share that knowledge with other people. And thats what were about. So this particular eclipse and youre going to hear this later from the scientists as well is going to excite a lot of people. And many of them watching this eclipse may choose astronomy as a career. I did, in 1979, a partial eclipse of the sun was visible in San Francisco. I was a broadcasting major. I happened to be interested in science and i took a bunch of tools to the Student Union and showed people how to watch a partial eclipse safely. Most people didnt know it was happening. So with me i had eclipse glasses, which are very important for viewing the partial phases and people were amazed that they could look at the sun and see it. I had ways to project the image on to cardboard using pinholes, using tiny holes and allows a single image of the sun to appear on a piece of white cardboard. And then you can have a lot of fun abnd if you have a lot of holes like a kol lacolander. I decided to become an astronomy educator. It was great to change the lives of the people watching the eclipse with me. Let me show you a little bit about whats going to happen for this eclipse. So if i can have the slide. A lot of you have seen this. This shows the path of totality across the u. S. Starting in oregon, in an hour and a half the shadow will traverse the u. S. And exit in the carolinas. But what i would like for you to Pay Attention to are the partial phases. There are many many many millions of people who are not going to get to the path of totality because of time, because of money, lack of resources, transportation. Theres lots of reasons people cant travel. The eclipse is going to be just as imagimagical for them if we provide them with the materials they need to see the eclipse safely and we can use this as a teaching moment. This is an opportunity to reach out to youth across the country and teach them a little astronomy as the partial is unfolding. Take a look at the map. All of the continental u. S. Sees at least a 70 partial eclipse. 70 of the sun will be obscured by the moon. Find the place where you live on the map. Maybe you live in detroit, atlanta, new orleans, the rural parts of new mexico, all of you are going to be able to experience this partial. At the Astronomical Society of the pacific were particularly interested in reaching underserved communities and children who represent communities underrepresented in science. We want to make sure that those kids are engaged fully in the eclipse, even if its a partial, so that they might decide to become an astronomer like i said. So what i have is some exam. S of activities that the Astronomical Society of the pacific has developed and assimilated across the country to make sure kids are engaged. Let me give you the example of one. This is a scale of the earth and the moon on a series of rulers. Let me explain. This is the moon. This is the earth on that side. And youll notice that the earth is a 1inch diameter marble and 30 inches away, 30 earths laid end to end is where we place the moon. And the moon is a quarter are of the diameter. This is a quarter of an inch. Quarter of a diameter of the earth. So this is an actual scale model. First of all you might be surprised because lots of the pictures and images that you see, the earth and moon are much closer together than this. But this is the actual distance and size. So thats a learning experience in and of itself. And now we can use this to actually model whats going to happen in terms of the shadow of the moon hitting the earth and what thats going to look like. You have everything to scale, so the sun and the shadows are going to work to scale too. What you can do is take this outside and the tricky part is you use the actual sun in the sky and you manipulate the stick so that the shadow of the moon is cast on the earth. And i cant do that in the studio because i dont have the sun right here. But i have a photograph. This is a photograph showing what the earth ball is going to look like if you line things up properly, which is pretty easily to do. And if you look carefully, what i love about this model is the very very dark shadow youre seeing in the middle of this marble representing the earth is the total eclipse location. If you live on the earth in that super super dark shadow, you get to see the total eclipse of the sun. But you may notice on the outside of the very dark circle is another shadow not as dark. Thats where youre going to see the partial eclipse. And so using this activity youre learning about shadows, about the dark, the light shadow, youre learning about the geometry of the eclipse. You can do a lot of things with this model. And this is just one of many activities that the Astronomical Society of the pacific has developed and disseminated to rangers in parks, libraries across the country, museums, schools, lots of different places with support from nasa and also the National Science foundati foundation. So that gives you some idea of how you can reach kids across the u. S. To make sure everybody is engaged so that astronomy can be diverse and inclusive and a wonderful experience for all. Thanks so much, linda. Youre going to talk about some of the most amazing telescopes looking at the sun. Take it away, david. Yeah, sure. So one of the things that most people probably dont know is that the National Science foundation is the steward for all groundbased astronomy in the United States. So nasa does a lot of the space based stuff. We do most of the ground based stuff. And we do this through our nationallaboratories. One is the National Solar observatory. And another is the atmospheric research. They do things this is a Beautiful Image of the sun. What one might ask is why does nsf or nasa or the federal government for that matter even care about solar science. What are the sort of things that i mean, dont we know all of the questions havent we answer all of the questions about the sun that we would want to ask . And the answer so that is no. And so basically from nsf perspective, we look at the sun from an astronomy perspective and also from a sunearth connection within our geospace science section. And so from the say tron astron perspective, we look at the sun as a star. Its the nearby laboratory that we can use to study stars like our sun and then try to expand that to stars that are further away, much further away. And we also look at the sun and its interaction with the planets in our solar system. Theres a number of planets outside of our own solar system that have been discovered. I think the count is over 2,000 confirmed and over 4,000 are candidates. Wae wa we want to apply the theories that we get from studying the sun to those systems. And we want to figure out and talk about tit. So the sun has all of these interesting phenomena like solar flairs, the solar wind and all of those things are collectively known as what we consider space weather. And so next slide please. And so a lot of that space weather occurs in this region of the roar the corona. Thats what well see during the total eclipse. Heres an image of it. Thats where a lot of the action is. Matt is going to talk about his coroen l signs thcience hes go do from the ground. But the interesting thing is theres a bit of the gap in the coverage of the corona and thats where we want to use and do science for the eclipse. And use the eclipse for that type of science. Another thing were doing at the nsf is we have, through our National Centers for atmospheric research, were going to fly our gulf stream jet, fly it along the path of the eclipse and use an instrument called an infrared spectrometer and take images of the corona during the eclipse. And then the final, last slide. And so we, as i mentioned before, were the steward of ground based astronomy. Right now we have two different Construction Projects within nsf. One is called the Large Survey Telescope and thats in south america, chile. Thats going to observe over stars and galaxies over a course of several days and repeat it over and over again surveying the universe. The one im involved in is this telescope right here. The daniel k solar telescope or kdst. This is going to be the largest solar telescope ever built. A 4 meter diameter mirror, 13 feet across. If you can imagine the amount of solar light that we can collect with this type of mirror. Its going to be an incredible High Resolution machine. Its going to be able to observe the sun at 2 20 to 30 or pixs on the sun at to 30 kilometers across. And thats where the interesting science were getting down to the interesting science. So with that ill hand it back to thomas. Thanks so much. Truly exciting. Whats happening in that telescope and the other things. Many of the stories about eclipses, you know, dont actually have to do with astronomy but have to do with nature, the atmospheric effects. And angela, youre going to talk about that. Why dont you tell us about your work. Thanks, thomas. So weve already heard a lot about how the space and looking at the corona and doing research on the sun itself and weve heard about engaging with the public. What im going to talk about is kind of somewhere in between all of that. So we want to do research on the impact of the eclipse on the ground, that is the atmosphere, the animals and the plants and also how we can use that to engage the public. In some cases to encourage people to become scientists and then others to turn them into fans of science. Lets start with the atmosphere. If i can have that first video. We know that over the course of the day the sun comes up and it goes up to its highest point and then back down and over that time we get Different Levels of elimination from the sun. But during the eclipse we have an added thing thats changing illumination. So the video is showing you what the illumination looks like as the sun is moving across the sky and now it is being eclipsed so were getting a decrease in the amount of sunlight. Thats going to have multiple effects. If we start with the atmosphere, you can imagine that as you block out the sun with this big rock, the moon, youre going to decrease the temperature. We know it gets colder when the cloud comes in front of the sun. Now its a big rock and the temperature is going to drop. Theres still science to be done in terms of understanding the magnitude of that drop, how it changes across the course of the eclipse. But also that drop generates air pressure changes which gets rise to air currents. So there will be experiments being done that will involve measuring air temperatures and air currents and that will