LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — We are now exactly one month away from the long-awaited total solar eclipse! For up to four and a half minutes on April 8, many Arkansans will witness daylight briefly turning into night.
Residents of the Natural State aren't the only ones excited about this rare event though— NASA HQ's Flight Director Nicki Rayl has been waiting for this day for years!
She's spoke with us live from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to answer some of our burning questions about this once-in-a-lifetime event.
While we know that the sun is expected to disappear behind the moon and the sky will go dark, what exactly leads up to that moment and what can we expect to see when it finally arrives?
"We're so excited for this event. The moon is going to fully block out the light from the sun. You're going to have prime total eclipse viewing in Little Rock, which is fantastic. So as the moon blocks the visible light from the sun, we're gonna experience darkness for up to four and a half minutes," Rayl explained. "This eclipse is going to go all the way from Texas up to Vermont. With the visible light blocked out, we're going to see four and a half minutes of totality depending on where you are. It's going to be a fantastic event to really experience the absence of light from the sun."
Arkansas falls directly in the path of totality, making it the perfect place to witness this historic event. A solar eclipse is the only time when we can see the corona, or the outer atmosphere of the sun, with our own eyes.
"Those wispy outer laters that are going to wrap around that eclipse event," she described.
While many of us plan on viewing this eclipse recreationally, what sort of thing are scientists looking out for during this event?
"So we are looking at, you know, coronal mass ejections and flares, things that are happening that we usually can't visualize in the bright light of the sun. We're also looking at how the energy transfers from the sun into the Earth's upper atmosphere or ionosphere driving solar weather and activities that we can't see in the bright light of the sun on a normal day," Rayl said.
By now, most Arkansans are prepared for this event will take place— but how will the eclipse affect the state's wildlife?
"It's gonna feel like dusk to animals. We've learned from past eclipses that this does mess up, you know, animals' kind of sense of day and night. Most of our lives and our animals' life cycles are governed by day and nightlife cycles," she described. "So these four and a half minutes are going to be a real opportunity for you to observe, not only with yourself and your families, but what's going on with wildlife around you and how it changes in those four and a half minutes."
To view the eclipse safely, NASA recommends that people view it through eclipse glasses or a safe handheld viewer. They stress that people should not use traditional sunglasses because they are not safe for viewing the sun.
Any solar eclipse glasses that are purchased must comply with the ISO 12312-2 international standard. Here's a list of where Arkansans can get them.