Month: August 2017

A crowd of students and their professors in First-Year Seminar classes gather outside Sage Science Center on Monday to view the partial solar eclipse.

Cloudy skies didn’t stop Stetson first-year student Carlie Minott from trying to catch a glimpse of Monday’s partial solar eclipse.

Carlie Minott

A physics major from College Park, Maryland, Minott tried a pinhole viewer made from a cereal box and then a pair of NASA-approved glasses as a crowd of students gathered outside Sage Science Center to view the celestial event Monday afternoon.

“I couldn’t really see it through the cereal box, but through the glasses, you can see the crescent shape,” Minott said. “It actually surprised me. … It’s just a wonderful phenomenon that you don’t get to see that often.”

It was the first total solar eclipse to cross America since 1918 and started at 11:50 a.m. EDT as a partial eclipse when the moon crossed into the path of the sun over the Hawaiian Islands, according to Space.com. It became a total eclipse over Oregon at 1:15 p.m. EDT and ended over mainland America at 2:49 p.m. in South Carolina.

Stetson Physics Professor Kevin Riggs tries to see the eclipse through a reflecting telescope.

Stetson Physics Professor Kevin Riggs, Ph.D., said he managed to get a clear look through his reflecting telescope outside Sage Science Center when the eclipse began.

“At 1:18, it just started and I saw just a little bit, about five minutes when it was clear and then the clouds rolled in — horrible timing,” he said.

The students met outside about 2-2:30 p.m. for First-Year Seminar classes, which allow them to work closely with a faculty member to explore a single topic — before classes begin for all students on Thursday, Aug 24.

First-year student Raven McCain said her mother went online to purchase NASA-approved glasses for her and the rest of their family. Such glasses were in demand on Monday afternoon, and she and other students were happy to pass them around, so others could see.

“Actually, it looks like a crescent moon up there right now, so that’s really cool,” said McCain, a biology major from New Smyrna Beach. “I could see through the clouds a little bit.”

Adapted from Stetson Today, August 21, 2017

Stetson Physics Professor Kevin Riggs has a timely activity planned Monday afternoon for students in his First-Year Seminar class.

Incoming students will meet in the FSEM classes for the first time today, Aug. 21, at 2:30 p.m. – just as a partial solar eclipse unfolds over DeLand.

The moon will begin to move between the Earth and Sun, blocking out some of the sun’s rays, about 1:18 p.m. on Aug. 21 and reach its maximum at 2:50 p.m.

The National Weather Service reported a thunderstorm in the area at 1:15 p.m. and partly sunny skies through the rest of this afternoon.

“The eclipse will be a bit under 90 percent in DeLand,” explained Riggs, Ph.D., chair of the Stetson University Physics Department. “You would need to travel up to South Carolina to see the total eclipse.”

Kevin Riggs, Ph.D., is chair of the Stetson Physics Department

Looking directly at the sun is dangerous and can cause permanent eye damage. Added Riggs, “I don’t have (eclipse-viewing) glasses and you need to be careful about bad quality ones that are not sufficiently optically dense or are scratched.”

Instead, Riggs has made a pinhole viewer for his FSEM class on Energy and the Environment to watch the rare eclipse. A pinhole viewer projects the image onto another flat surface for safe viewing.

For those who can’t get outside, NASA will provide live video streams of the total solar eclipse across America.

On the Stetson campus, Riggs said people will need a view of the southern and western parts of the sky to “see” the sun during the eclipse.

Stetson Professor Emily Mieras also will engage the 16 students in her FSEM class in the eclipse. She plans to make pinhole viewers from cereal boxes for students in her American Popular Culture class to watch the eclipse and discuss the media coverage of it.

Emily Mieras, Ph.D. is chair of the Stetson History Department

“It’s gone beyond a celestial event to being a cultural phenomenon,” said Mieras, Ph.D., associate professor of History and American Studies, and chair of the History Department. “I think people have this fascination with astronomical phenomena. There’s a long history of people being fascinated about it, long before people understood how it all worked.”

Adapted from Stetson Today, August 7, 2017