View transcript
- Hi, I'm Isabel Hawkins, astronomer from the Exploratorium. Today, December 14th, 2020, was a special day in Latin America. The two countries of Chile and Argentina had the experience of an eclipse from two different meteorological situations. Because let me tell you, on the Chilean side, it was very cloudy and rainy, and so they couldn't actually see the eclipse in the sky; they were just seeing clouds and they were able to see the environment getting dark and getting colder, but they weren't able to see totality, which is actually the crown jewel of what a total solar eclipse experience is all about. But then, they had to totality happening in Chile at 1:02 pm local time. And because the shadow of the moon travels almost at the speed of sound, it crossed from the West Coast of South America through the Andes onto Argentina and people in Argentina were only about seven minutes later, were able to see totality with clear skies. It was absolutely wonderful. Everyone there, we saw lots of images and reactions from people all over Argentina that were near the Andes on the western side of these beautiful mountain range. And they were able to see totality and see the corona of the sun, which is only visible during an eclipse. Because what happens during an eclipse is that the moon comes between the earth and the sun, so it appears as a great, dark circle, the sun appears like a great, black circle, which is basically the backside of the moon that we're seeing. And surrounding it is its atmosphere that is most external to the sun that we call the corona, and that is only visible during a total solar eclipse. And so people were able to see that. And it was wonderful because we're in solar minimum right now, minimum magnetism on the surface of the sun. And so that corona looked very equatorial, it looked elongated. And that's something that's really interesting to follow along from one eclipse to the other, to see how the corona changes. And as a matter of fact, the Exploratorium and NASA, we're going to bring you two additional eclipses in the next few years. The first one, an annular eclipse, in which the moon doesn't quite cover the entire photosphere of the sun, leaving what we call a "ring of fire". And the annular eclipse will take place in the Southwestern U.S. on October 14th, 2023, and we're going to broadcast it from the Navajo Nation Monument Valley spectacular site. So we're excited about that eclipse as we move towards the next total solar eclipse that's going to regale the northern hemisphere beginning in the West Coast of Mexico, coming through Texas, all the way to the state of Maine. And that total solar eclipse will take place on April 8th of 2024. So don't miss it. Tune in, and be assured that the Exploratorium and NASA are going to bring you the best images of the next two Solar eclipses. Thank you for joining us.