This piece is scheduled to appear on October 21st 2014, two days before a partial eclipse of the

sun will be visible in the whole United States except for the Eastern-most part of the Eastern
seaboard. Usually, there is a total eclipse of the sun about every 18 months and an annular
eclipse of the sun, when the moon isnt quite big enough to cover the sun across the center,
also about every 18 months. The year 2014 is unusual in that there is a total and annular eclipse
but there are a couple of partial eclipses: the first one was back in April and the second is on
October 23rd. In the afternoon of October 23rd, the eclipse will be about 60% coverage of the
Santa Ana by the moon through Oregon and Washington, ranging down to about 45% in
southern California. There will be a meeting of professional amateur eclipse enthusiasts at the
Sacramento Peak Observatory of Sunspot, New Mexico in the days following the eclipse we will
all be observing the eclipse from that 9200ft altitude on the afternoon of October 23rd. This
eclipse will be good practice also for observing the eclipse of August 21st, 2017, in which a path
of totality will cross the continental United States from upper left to the lower right, that is Oregon
to South Carolina. That path is only 100km or so wide, so most people will have just a partial
eclipse. And the partial eclipse could be 80%, 90% etc. But whenever any little sliver of the
everyday sunlight, which is the photosphere, appears it is too bright to look at safely, so the
precautions that one has to take to observe a partial eclipse of the sun are the same for this
October 23rd, 2014 eclipse as they will be for everybody outside the path of totality on August
21st, 2017 and also for the people even in the path of totality before and after a couple minutes
of totality. In order to observe the sun safely on any day, including today, you need to cut down
the suns intensity by a factor of between 100,000 and 1,000,000, that is nuclear intensity 5,
because of the zeros, and nuclear intensity 6, because of the six zeros. That can be done with a
readily available welding filter of at least shade 12, which is more commonly available than the
more desirable shade of 14. There are a lot of possibilities of getting some aluminized mylar that
is made to safe specifications. Companies like Rainbow Symphony and Thousand Oaks Optical
sell these filters for 50 cents or a dollar a piece. But between when you read this on the 21st,
youre not going to be able to get one on the 23rd. Still, it would be a good notification for your
one prepared for the eclipse on 2017 when many of us are trying to arrange for such filters to
be more widely available locally for people. We know there are stories of misguided individuals
saying that eclipses are too hazardous to look at all or that you should see them on TV or that
youll go blind. And we think it is important for people to have correct information, in fact eclipses
can be very inspiring, especially to students who may be really interested in seeing the sky go
pretty dark at the time of the eclipse this will happen on 2017, but it wont happen in this years
partial eclipse. So students should be encouraged to see the eclipse but to see the eclipse
safely. For an eclipse like this one where the moon half covers the sun for the peak of the
eclipse, you can just use the idea of a pinhole camera, where a punching hole on a piece of
paper or cardboard projects an image few feet away. And under tree you might naturally get a lot
of little pinhole images of partially eclipsed sun on the ground or on the wall on an angle It might
appear often on a wall in the western United States because the eclipse will be low in the sky in
the afternoon of October 23rd. During the total eclipse that will be visible for 2 minutes in that
narrow 100km wide band in 2017, then you can and should watch without any eye protection

because then the everyday sun is covered and only the solar corona will be visible which would
be exciting to see and it is about the same brightness as the full moon and equally safe to look
at. But again, before that and after that and off to the sides for a partial eclipse like this one, and
for an ordinary day like any other day that the sun is shining, you do need some protection if you
are going to look up at the sun or you should project the sun down on the ground and stand with
your back to the sun and look at the projection. One can use binoculars, for example, also to
project down on the ground, but you must be very careful not to look at the sun through to the
binoculars. Use it only to project away from you and stand with the sun on your back if you are
using binoculars. Eclipses are fun to see the next total eclipse will be in Svalbard in the Arctic
north of Norway on March 20th in 2015. The year after there will be an eclipse cite that goes
across Indonesia in March 9th of 2016. And then little more than a year later will come the great
American eclipse of August 21st, 2017, in fact there is a website by Michael Zeiler called
greatamericaneclipse.com that has a lot of maps and information about where to go and what to
see in 2017. On behalf of the work group on eclipse of the International Astronomical Union, I
run a website at the easy-to-remember address of eclipses.info. So just type eclipses.info into
your web browser and you can see links to maps by several people who have automated the
maps so that you can click on the google map to see the local circumstances and times and
angles for your particular location. Increasingly there are several different kinds of maps that are
available for eclipses, including some by Fred Espenak who has an eclipse site at
eclipsewise.com, taking over from his former NASA eclipse site. There are maps from Michael
Zeiler, a professional map maker who is now applying his skills to eclipse maps. And from
Xavier Jubier, a French informational technology specialist who has put these google maps
online with the path of totality or of the limits of the partial eclipse on them. Also, the
meteorologist Jay Anderson with whom I have just submitted to Houghton Mifflin Hartford the
Peterson Field Guild to Weather has a website at eclipser.ca, thats in Canada. So eclipser.ca.
And his website has his calculations of cloud statistics from satellites over about 25 years and
also some tables based on ground-based observations on cloudiness for 25 years. So particular
for the 2017 eclipse you can look at that website and evaluate where the average cloudiness on
that age on August is likely to be least. Turns out that the Western sides are on the whole better
than the Eastern sides on that occasion. I wish you happy observing of eclipses both these
partial possibilities and eventually the great American eclipse of August 21st, 2017. This is Jay
Pasachoff talking.