HOW TO WATCH THE ECLIPSE (AND SHADOW SNAKES) - Smarter Every Day 171

Hey, it's me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day. We've all heard about solar eclipses, right? And you're probably aware that there's a huge one coming very soon. So, you think about how to prepare, and you're thinking maybe I gotta get some special goggles so that when I'm looking up at the sky and I see the moon come across I don't hurt my eyes, so I can see totality by looking directly at the sun or something like that, right? It's actually far more complicated and far more beautiful than that.

There are very specific moments that happen during a solar eclipse that, if you're prepared for 'em, down to the second, you can see really neat things that you didn't know about before. So, today on Smarter Every Day, there's this hyper-meticulous guy in my hometown. When I say meticulous, just look at what he does for a living. Anyway, this guy has chased eclipses all over the world—eclipses, I don't know. Anyway, this guy is like having a meeting right now, with all his buddies. They're going to plan, down to the second, where they're going to be. So they can see these individual events, not just totality, but there's other stuff that happens. Anyway, let's go bust up in here and let's figure out how to scientifically watch an eclipse. Let's go.

Can I bust up your meeting and ask you a question? Yes, sir. This is Dr. Gordon Tulipan. He's a well-respected plastic surgeon by day known for great attention to detail. So why are you guys here listening to this guy? Laughter 'Cause he's the man? I'm here because he's known as an eclipse fanatic. He's traveled the world to film eclipses and he's even been invited to give talks at NASA.

At the meeting, I told Dr. Tulipan I wanted to go to my son's baseball game, so he agreed to meet with me the following day in his conference room. By the way, my oldest son found his baseball swing this year, and I love to watch him play. I came back the next day for a one-on-one eclipse study session with Dr. Tulipan. I got a good show for you.

DESTIN: So I guess your ultimate goal is to prepare people for this eclipse.
GORDON: And to inspire them not to miss it. This eclipse is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for a lot of people. People are not going to travel all over the world to go to eclipses like I do. It's a wonderful thing to have an eclipse in your country you can drive to, and when I show you the world map of the eclipses that are going to happen in the next twenty years, you'll understand how difficult it is to get to a total solar eclipse with your son.

He started with the basics. He first explained how magical it is that our Moon and Sun are almost exactly the same size in the sky, even though they're very different celestial bodies. The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse. This means as it gets closer to us, it looks bigger, and as it gets further away from us, it looks smaller. The really cool thing about this is that at the smaller size, it doesn't quite cover the Sun. But at the largest size, it does. This means that there's two major types of eclipses. An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon doesn't totally block out the Sun. It looks like a bright glowing solar disk poking from behind the Moon. When the Moon is larger, it does block out the Sun. This, of course, is a total eclipse.

Eclipses are few and far between, but only a few hit each continent over the course of several decades. The red curves here show annular eclipses where the Moon is smaller than the Sun. So, as you can imagine, the total eclipses which are shown here in blue are extra special sweet. If one of these is in the country where you live, you really need to figure out how to drive to it. These narrow bands where the eclipse Moon shadow moves over the ground are called the totality plane. You have to be within the band to see a total eclipse, but it's not just okay to be within the band. Your goal should be to get to the very center of the band. At the edges, the totality only lasts a few seconds. But down in the center, it can last for several minutes.

Gordon explained that the most important thing about wherever you're watching the eclipse from is called the contact times. C1, or Contact Time 1, is the exact instant when the lunar disk touches the solar disk in the sky. The Moon then continues to move across the Sun for quite some time. This can usually take over an hour. Then, C2 happens. C2 is the exact second when the lunar disk covers the Sun. C3 is the moment that the Sun pokes out from behind the Moon again. It then traverses for probably an hour or so, and then C4 happens. C4 is the exact moment that the Moon quits covering the Sun at all.

GORDON: What I'm telling people to do is not to miss the partial phase phenomenon, which are the other things that happen before totality. Your surroundings change. The temperature changes, the lighting changes, the animals get confused because they think that nighttime is falling, and if you're really lucky, you'll get to see shadow bands. Shadow bands don't happen at every eclipse and they don't happen at every observing area.

DESTIN: What are shadow bands?
GORDON: It bends the light and causes motions of serpentine shadows across the ground that look like thousands of snakes crawling in unison...
DESTIN: Shut up!
GORDON: ...in parallel going away from you.
DESTIN: This is bull.
GORDON: It's unbelievable. I saw them in 2002.
DESTIN: No!
GORDON: Absolutely.
DESTIN: You're saying... You're saying it's gonna... it might... look like snakes crawling on the ground?
GORDON: Very thin because they're little ground shadows, and the way I perceive them is, picture thousands of parallel snakes, going like this, going away from you and to one of the sides depending on...
DESTIN: WHAT??? Snakes? I thought an eclipse was like, you know, I'm gonna look at the... NO! It's about shadow bands for me now. Here's the deal, in 1842, this guy was like "it was so striking that children were running around trying to grab those things with their hands". This is a real phenomenon. I've looked it up, and scientists do not know what causes it. They have like a ton of theories. They don't know. To me, it sounds like an optical interference thing. But they don't know.

And there's not a good video on the internet. There's some videos, but it's such a low contrast event that nobody has ever captured it really well. So the obvious question, for Mr. Solar-Eclipse-Expert, is how do we get a good video of shadow bands? How do we capture it? When does it happen?

DESTIN: Just before C2?
GORDON: Just before C2 and just after C3, when the Sun is a slit. It has to be that final little narrow slit; otherwise it doesn't work.
DESTIN: How long does it last?
GORDON: For about 20 or 30 seconds. You have to catch it.
DESTIN: So you have to know it's about to happen.
GORDON: Exactly.
DESTIN: I rarely ask people to do things on SmarterEveryDay videos, but we have to catch videos of shadow bands. That has to happen. I think...
GORDON: So the way to do it is set up a video camera on a manual exposure on a kingsize white sheet.
DESTIN: Or light concrete or something.
GORDON: Or light concrete.
DESTIN: Ok, the next thing is called the diamond ring. The diamond ring is the part just before C2 where it actually looks like a diamond ring if you're taking a photograph of the Sun. What happens immediately after that is fascinating. It's called Bailey's Beads. Now, Bailey's Beads is when the lunar disk is right about to cover the top of the solar disk. What's really cool is that it should be just a really skinny crescent all the way around, right? But the fact is the Moon has valleys and mountains. And those start to close over the solar disk and you can see the light coming around those mountains. It's really cool. It's breaking that solar light up into beads. It's called Bailey's Beads.

Anyway, you have to know the exact second that happens cause it's such a fast phenomenon you have to be taking photos like at that instant in order to catch it.
GORDON: So in 2001, I programmed—I paid a programmer to program the first eclipse talking timer. This is from 2002, and I still have one that works.
DESTIN: Wow. So you... So you made this back then.
GORDON: That's right. So there's the original talking timer.
DESTIN: You...
GORDON: From 2002.
DESTIN: You made this? Ok, I don't know what's more impressive: that you made this in 2002 or that you have one of these things that still works.

Ok, you know all the words, it's time to plan out the day of the solar eclipse. Step 1: Get to the totality plane, preferably in the center of the totality plane. At that point, you're gonna wait for the lunar disk to touch the solar disk, that's C1. Game on. At that point, weird stuff starts to go down. The temperature starts to decrease. Animals start to freak out cause it's getting dark, they think it's about to be night. All that happens over an extended period of time, well over an hour. After that, we're approaching C2 and that's where things get crazy.

The three phenomena that you're gonna look out for. Number one: Shadow Bands. I've already figured out I'm gonna use a big ol' piece of white plastic to try and see the shadow bands. I'm excited about that. The second one: The diamond ring. That's about 5 seconds before C2. Immediately after that, if you're a good photographer, you're gonna catch Bailey's Beads. I'm going for it. Okay? Bam! C2 hits.

After C2, that's when you're in totality. You can remove your glasses and you can look directly at the Sun. At that point, somewhere in there is max totality. I'm told to scan the horizon cause it looks like it's a 360° sunrise. After that, right before C3, get your glasses back on, because the Sun is about to pop out and you don't want to hurt your eyes. Immediately after C3, first you've got Bailey's Beads, and then you have the diamond ring, and then, again, if you're lucky, for 60 seconds after that, there's a possibility of Shadow Bands. After that, we're moving towards C4, the temperature is coming back up, everything is going to be awesome except it's going to be over.

The cool thing about it is you have to know exactly when it's gonna happen cause you get one shot at seeing all this stuff. Back in the day, you had to send a self-addressed stamped envelope to a space by center. These are Gordon's. He was like, didn't want to let me borrow them because they're so valuable to him. Anyway, the way it worked is you've got these solar eclipse bulletins and you had to calculate the exact moment by interpolation when your contact times were for wherever you were on the globe. It was very, very cumbersome.

However, we have good news; we live in the age of smartphones and we also have a plastic surgeon in Alabama who decided to create an App so that you can take your phone out, geolocate wherever you are and instantly calculate your contact times for your position. And that's flipping awesome, which is why I asked him if it was real and if it was gonna work, and if he could go with me to go to Tennessee where the totality plane exists and test the contact times inside and outside of the totality plane. Remember, you want to get to the center. I wanted to test his app on the edge.

Check it out. Okay, we're in the parking lot of a church in Brentwood, Tennessee.
GORDON: We're... We're in this sidewalk.
DESTIN: Uh huh.
GORDON: Right here.
DESTIN: Yeah.
GORDON: So this sidewalk is in totality, that tree over there where that sign is is not in totality.
DESTIN: Okay, so I'm gonna try this. So I got the app here. Solar Eclipse Timer App. So I'm going to get my location.
GORDON: Right.
DESTIN: And then...
GORDON: We're in.
DESTIN: That's my location right there, right? Latitude, longitude...
GORDON: And four contact times.
DESTIN: C1, C2, C3, C4. Okay. Load my contact times so I have a 6 seconds duration totality right here.
GORDON: Right.
DESTIN: Does that make sense?
GORDON: It probably would be a little bit shorter.
DESTIN: Somebody's calling me. Alright, a little bit shorter?
GORDON: Yeah, because we need...
DESTIN: Oh, we need to turn that off the day of. You don't want people calling you during the...
GORDON: I have that in the instructions.
DESTIN: Okay.
GORDON: A 15 minutes shut off texting and phone receiving.
DESTIN: Okay, that's a really good point. Okay, so, let's go to where it's not in totality.
GORDON: Right, so we're right here and we were able to pick it up.
DESTIN: Okay, so we should go like, to that tree.
GORDON: And we should just get a partial eclipse.
DESTIN: Okay. Let's do it. So seriously, like right here, load my times... get my location... Look at that. I've got C1, and I've got C4 I have no C2 and C3. I'm not in the totality plane.
GORDON: That's correct.
DESTIN: We just walked across a parking lot and this tells us if we're gonna see the eclipse or not.
GORDON: That's exactly right.
DESTIN: How long have you worked on this?
GORDON: I've worked on this since last August and I've tested in the parking lot about 6 times prior to today.
DESTIN: Really?
GORDON: Yes.
DESTIN: Are you excited that it works?
GORDON: I am.
DESTIN: I'm not very impressed Gordon.
DESTIN: So, what's it now here?
GORDON: Oh, here, now wait.
DESTIN: Solar Eclipse Timer?
GORDON: Yes.
DESTIN: That's what you get in the AppStore.
GORDON: Now.
DESTIN: I'm trying to sell this app. He's just like so into that. Go ahead.
GORDON: You see this is a 6 and it's actually not.
DESTIN: Okay, I came back into the car to review the footage. The man has spent a lot of his time making this app so that you can watch the eclipse. He's testing it. It's a really big deal, so if you want this, you can go to the AppStore, and it's Solar Eclipse Timer, and it talks to you as the eclipse goes to tell you C1, C2, C3, and C4. It's a pretty big deal.
GORDON: It's 9 seconds over there.
DESTIN: Is it?
GORDON: Yeah.
DESTIN: Okay. Seriously, this is the best. I love this man. Oh okay, that's so good. Alright, get the glasses that are approved for direct solar viewing. Because if you get the wrong kind, they can actually open your pupil up more and let harmful UV in, so get the right kind and then do your homework, and then you can take them off and look directly at the total solar eclipse.

And more importantly, know when to put them back on before the Sun pops back out. And get to see your C3. Thanks again to 23andMe for supporting this episode of Smarter Every Day, and thank you for watching it. I hope you learned something here because I learned a lot. These are my favorite videos where I don't know what's going on until I just start asking the expert. I love these videos.

Anyway, if you enjoyed it and it added value to your life, please consider subscribing, only if I've earned it. If not, no big deal. Totally get it. It's the internet. Do whatever you want. Also, I have some other stuff on SmarterEveryDay2. I've got a little background description on how to use your camera to video the eclipse. Gordon has a thing called the drift method. I'll put that on SmarterEveryDay2. Also, the conference tape will talk. I'll put that over there too.

I really appreciate you and I really want video of shadow bands. Anyway, I'm Destin getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one.