NASA Partnerships Bring 2024 Total Solar Eclipse to Everyone

Eclipses are an important contribution to NASA’s research into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, and the part of Earth’s atmosphere where space weather happens. They’re also an inspirational opportunity for the public to get involved, learn, and connect with our place in the universe.

On Monday, April 8, NASA and its partners will celebrate the wonders of the total solar eclipse as it passes over North America, with the path of totality in the United States, from Kerrville, Texas, to Houlton, Maine.

Our partners bring their creativity in sharing the excitement of the upcoming eclipse and help encourage everyone to safely enjoy this celestial event.

Maureen O’Brien

Strategic alliances and partnerships manager for NASA’s Office of Communications

Here are just some ways NASA is working with partners to engage the public in the upcoming total solar eclipse.

• NASA and the Major League Baseball Players Association are collaborating on the development of video and social content to emphasize eclipse awareness and safe viewing. NASA representatives also will throw out the first pitch in several games leading up to the eclipse.
• Indianapolis Motor Speedway is hosting an eclipse viewing event and live broadcast that will feature NASA exhibits, astronauts, INDY drivers, and STEM engagement talks and activities for visitors.
• Peanuts Worldwide is supporting educators with the release of new eclipse learning resources for elementary and middle school students and Snoopy is participating in events in Cleveland.
• Krispy Kreme introduced a new doughnut in honor of the eclipse and will share information about the eclipse and safe viewing.
• NASA is working with Google on new eclipse content on the Arts & Culture and other Google pages.
• Third Rock Radio (TRR) is sharing NASA podcast content and expert interviews, educational and safety messages, and a message from the International Space Station. TRR also will feature a Solar Songs listener request weekend leading up to eclipse day and live NASA TV audio coverage during the eclipse. 
• Nasdaq will carry coverage of part of the NASA TV broadcast on its screen in Times Square.

This year’s total solar eclipse represents a unique opportunity for NASA and partners to collaborate to inspire and engage students across the country.

Rob Lasalvia

Partnership manager for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement

• Crayola Education released an eclipse-themed how-to video about the eclipse with a creative exercise for students.
• LEGO Education launched an eclipse education challenge to engage students and the public in learning more about the Sun and the eclipse.
• Microsoft will launch a quiz on eclipse safety with links to NASA resources.
• Discovery Education will get classrooms excited about space with eclipse resources on its PreK–12 learning platform.
• Canva released a series of free interactive eclipse courses and LabXchange released a new eclipse learning pathway for students.
• The Achievery will feature a collection of eclipse videos, share NASA’s live eclipse coverage, and host student events at AT&T locations across the country. 
• NASA experts participated in a Game Jam hosted by the National Esports Association in February in which university students were challenged to create a game simulation of the Eclipse. The student-developed games will be featured during an online eclipse gaming event April 8.
• Jack and Jill of America, Inc. will host eclipse watch parties across the country for which NASA will provide viewing eclipse resources and educational materials.
• Girl Scouts of the USA is sharing NASA eclipse information and encouraging its chapters and troops to host watch parties or connect to local NASA events.
• NASA partnered with the National Park Service and Earth to Sky on activities, including the “Interpreting Eclipses” webinar series, to prepare interpreters and informal educators for the total eclipse and Heliophysics Big Year. Through this partnership, national parks hosting eclipse events also will provide elements designed especially for the blind and low vision, neurodivergent children, the physically impaired, and those with hearing impairments.
• NASA is providing eclipse resources and educational materials to local 4-H clubs along the path of totality through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At NASA, we believe that science is for everyone. You don’t need a degree in science to be curious, ask questions, and explore how our world and universe work. We work to help people on their own journeys of scientific exploration.

Anita Dey

Partnerships manager for outreach and engagement for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate

Learn more about NASA’s strategic partnerships and STEM engagement partnerships online. To learn more about where and how to safely view this year’s total solar eclipse, visit:  https://go.nasa.gov/Eclipse2024.

Author: Gina Anderson, NASA Office of Communications

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That Starry Night Sky? It’s Full of Eclipses

Our star, the Sun, on occasion joins forces with the Moon to offer us Earthlings a spectacular solar eclipse – like the one that will be visible to parts of the United States, Mexico, and Canada on April 8.

But out there, among the other stars, how often can we see similar eclipses? The answer depends on your point of view. Literally.

On Earth, a total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon blocks the Sun’s disk as seen from part of Earth’s surface. In this case, the “path of totality” will be a strip cutting across the country, from Texas to Maine.

We also can see “eclipses” involving Mercury and Venus, the two planets in our solar system that orbit the Sun more closely than Earth, as they pass between our telescopes and the Sun (though only by using telescopes with protective filters to avoid eye damage). In these rare events, the planets are tiny dots crossing the Sun’s much larger disk.

And astronomers can, in a sense, “see” eclipses among other systems of planets orbiting their parent stars. In this case, the eclipse is a tiny drop in starlight as a planet, from our point of view, crosses the face of its star. That crossing, called a transit, can register on sensitive light sensors attached to telescopes on Earth and those in space, such as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, or TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). It’s how the bulk of the more than 5,500 confirmed exoplanets – planets around other stars – have been detected so far, although other methods also are used to detect exoplanets.

“A solar eclipse is a huge transit,” said Allison Youngblood, the deputy project scientist for TESS at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

And both types of “transits” – whether they involve solar eclipses or exoplanets – can yield world-changing science. Solar eclipse observations in 1919 helped prove Einstein’s theory of general relativity, when the bending of a star’s light by the Sun’s gravity caused the star’s apparent position to shift – showing that gravity causes space and time to curve around it.

Exoplanet transits also provide far more than just detections of distant planets, Youngblood said.

“The planet passes in front of the star, and blocks a certain amount of the star’s light,” she said. “The dip [in starlight] tells us about the size of the planet. It gives us a measurement of the radius of the planet.”

Careful measurements of multiple transits also can reveal how long a year is on an exoplanet, and provide insights into its formation and history. Careful measurements of multiple transits also can provide insights into exoplanet formation and history.

And the starlight shining through the exoplanet’s atmosphere during its transit, if measured using an instrument called a spectrograph, can reveal deeper characteristics of the planet itself. The light is split into a rainbow-like spectrum, and slices missing from the spectrum can indicate gases in the planet’s atmosphere that absorbed that “color” – or wavelength.

“Measuring the planet at many wavelengths tells us what chemicals and what molecules are in that planet’s atmosphere,” Youngblood said.

Eclipses are such a handy way to capture information about distant worlds that scientists have learned how to create their own. Instead of waiting for eclipses to occur in nature, they can engineer them right inside their telescopes. Instruments called coronagraphs, first used on Earth to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona), are now carried aboard several space telescopes. And when NASA’s next flagship space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launches by May 2027, it will demonstrate new coronagraph technologies that have never been flown in space before. Coronagraphs use a system of masks and filters to block the light from a central star, revealing the far fainter light of planets in orbit around it.

Of course, that isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Whether searching for transits, or for direct images of exoplanets using a coronagraph, astronomers must contend with the overwhelming light from stars – an immense technological challenge.

“An Earth-like transit in front of stars is equivalent to a mosquito walking in front of a headlight,” said David Ciardi, chief scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. “That’s how little light is blocked.”

We don’t have this problem when viewing solar eclipses – “our very first coronagraphs,” Ciardi says. By pure happenstance, the Moon covers the Sun completely during an eclipse.

“A solar eclipse is like a human walking in front of a headlight,” he said.

We would have no such luck on other planets in our solar system.

Mars’ oddly shaped moons are too small to fully block the Sun during their transits; and while eclipses might be spectacular among the outer planets – for instance, Jupiter and its many moons – they wouldn’t match the total coverage of a solar eclipse.

We happen to be living at a fortunate time for eclipse viewing. Billions of years ago, the Moon was far closer to Earth, and would have appeared to dwarf the Sun during an eclipse. And in about 700 million years, the Moon will be so much farther away that it will no longer be able to make total solar eclipses.

“A solar eclipse is the pinnacle of being lucky,” Tripathi said. “The Moon’s size and distance allow it to completely block out the Sun’s light. We’re at this perfect time and place in the universe to be able to witness such a perfect phenomenon.”

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Scientists Use NASA Data to Predict Solar Corona Before Eclipse

Our Sun, like many stars, is adorned with a crown. It’s called a corona (Latin for “crown” or “wreath”) and consists of long, thread-like strands of plasma billowing out from the Sun’s surface. The powerful magnetic field of the Sun defines these strands, causing them to ripple and evolve their structures constantly. The strands are faint, however, so the only way to observe the corona with the naked eye is during a total solar eclipse.

In anticipation of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, scientists at Predictive Science are using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to predict what our Sun’s crown may look like on that day. What’s more, their model uses the computational efforts of NASA’s Pleiades Supercomputer to update its predictions in near real-time. This means that the model continuously updates its predictions as it ingests data beamed down from SDO, providing information as close to real-time as possible.

The solar corona is our star’s outer atmosphere. It “extends out into interplanetary space as the solar wind,” said Predictive Science president Jon Linker. Driven by heat and magnetic turbulence in the Sun, this wind blows out to the edges of the solar system. “It envelopes the planets,” Linker said, “including Earth.”

As Earth and other planets bathe in coronal outflow, their atmospheres react to the energetic particles and magnetic fields found within the solar wind. This reaction, called space weather, can range from mild to severe, just like terrestrial weather. Extreme space weather events, such as large solar eruptions called coronal mass ejections, can disrupt important communications technology, affect astronauts in orbit, or even harm the electric grids we all rely on.

Space weather is one of the most tangible effects of the Sun’s dynamic exterior, and creating accurate forecasts is something scientists are striving toward. According to Linker, refining these solar models helps build the foundation for forecasting. “If you’re going to predict the path of a coronal mass ejection, just like for a hurricane, to have this more accurate background is really important,” he said.

SDO and other solar observatories provide detailed insights about the corona, but scientists are still missing some vital information about the forces that drive its activity, which is needed to predict the corona’s appearance with precision. “We don’t have a way of measuring the magnetic field accurately in the corona,” said Emily Mason, a research scientist at Predictive Science. “That’s one of the things that makes this so challenging.”

To build their model, researchers at Predictive Science use measurements of the Sun’s changing magnetic field at the solar surface to drive their model in near real-time. A key to this innovation was creating an automated process that converts raw data from SDO to show how magnetic flux and energy are injected into the corona over time. Adding this dynamic into the model allows the corona to evolve over time, leading to solar eruptions. “We developed a software pipeline that took in the magnetic field maps, picked out all of the areas that should be energized, and then fine-tuned the amount of energy to add to those areas,” Mason said. Building this automatic pipeline was a huge step forward for the team. In past predictions, the model used a static snapshot of the surface magnetic field – not ideal for keeping up with the ever-changing Sun, especially during our current heightened period of solar activity. Similarly, in iterations from 2017 and 2021, Mason explained that a teammate used to “literally hand-draw which areas on the Sun needed to be energized” by analyzing extreme ultraviolet activity in certain regions. Continuously updating the magnetic field is central to all of the changes with this year’s model, and the team has high hopes for the results.

The recurrence of total solar eclipses provides opportunities to test the accuracy of their models against real-life conditions and update them accordingly. “We’ve used the eclipse predictions every time to do something new with the model,” said Cooper Downs, a research scientist at Predictive Science who orchestrated the automated modeling pipeline. “I’m really excited to see over the next two weeks how this prediction keeps improving. I think it will be a really drastic difference from what we used to be able to do.”

Mason shares his enthusiasm. “The eclipse is just such a fantastic chance to go, ‘Look at this! This is what we think it’s gonna look like! Don’t you want to learn more about this?” she said with a grin. “It’s a really exciting opportunity for us to share the things that excite us all year round with everybody else.”

By Rachel Lense
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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NASA Sets Coverage for Astronaut Loral O’Hara, Crewmates Return

Three crew members are scheduled to begin their return to Earth on Friday, April 5, from the International Space Station. NASA will provide live coverage of their departure from the orbital complex and landing.

NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus will depart from the station’s Rassvet module in the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 11:55 p.m. EDT April 5, and will head for a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, at 3:18 a.m. Saturday, April 6 (12:18 p.m. Kazakhstan time).

Coverage will begin at 8 p.m. on April 5 with farewells and the Soyuz hatch closure on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.

O’Hara is completing a mission spanning 204 days in space that covered 3,264 orbits of the Earth and 86.5 million miles. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya launched with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson to the station aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft on March 23. Dyson will remain aboard the station for a six-month research mission.

After landing, the three crew members will fly on a helicopter from the landing site to the recovery staging city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. O’Hara then will depart back to Houston.

Friday, April 5
8 p.m.: NASA coverage of farewells and hatch closure of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft begins

11:30 p.m.: NASA coverage for undocking continues

11:55 p.m.: Undocking

Saturday, April 6
2 a.m.: NASA coverage of deorbit burn and landing begins.

2:24 a.m.: Deorbit burn

3:18 a.m.: Landing

NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):

http://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

Julian Coltre / Josh Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
julian.n.coltre@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

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Abbey A. Donaldson

NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2024

The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its 2024 roster. The program fosters excellence and inclusive leadership in astrophysics by supporting a diverse group of exceptionally promising and innovative early-career astrophysicists.

The NHFP enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observations, simulations, experimentation, or instrument development. Over 520 applicants vied for the 2024 fellowships. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support at a U.S. institution.

Once selected, fellows are named to one of three sub-categories corresponding to three broad scientific questions that NASA seeks to answer about the universe:

• How does the universe work? – Einstein Fellows
• How did we get here? – Hubble Fellows
• Are we alone? – Sagan Fellows

“The NASA Hubble Fellowship Program is a highly competitive program, and this year’s cadre of Fellows are to be congratulated on their selection,” said Mark Clampin, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “They will undoubtably be future leaders in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics.”

The list below provides the names of the 2024 awardees, their fellowship host institutions, and their proposed research topics.

2024 NASA Hubble Fellowship Program:

How does the universe work? – Einstein Fellows:

• Vishal Baibhav, Columbia University, Dancing with Black Holes: Harnessing gravitational waves to understand the formation of black holes
• Jordy Davelaar, Princeton University, Unraveling the physics of accreting black hole binaries
• Alexander Dittmann, Institute for Advanced Study, Bridging the Gap in Supermassive Black Hole Binary Accretion – From Simulation to Observation
• Cristhian Garcia Quintero, Harvard University, Phenomenological modified gravity in the non-linear regime and improving BAO measurements with Stage-IV surveys
• Amelia (Lia) Hankla, University of Maryland, College Park, Explaining Radio to X-ray Observations of Luminous Black Holes with a Multizone Outflowing Corona Model
• Keefe Mitman, Cornell University, Decoding General Relativity with Next-Generation Numerical Relativity Waveforms

How did we get here? – Hubble Fellows:

• Michael Calzadilla, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, A Multiwavelength View of the Evolving Baryon Cycle in Galaxy Clusters
• Sanskriti Das, Stanford University, Where the energetic universe meets the hot universe
• Yue Hu, Institute for Advanced Study, The Role of Magnetic Field in Galaxy Cluster’s Diffuse Structure Formation
• Wynn Jacobson-Galan, California Institute of Technology, Final Moments: Uncovering the Rate of Enhanced Red Supergiant Mass-loss in the Local Volume
• Madeleine McKenzie, Carnegie Observatories, Uncovering the unknown origins of globular clusters
• Jed McKinney, University of Texas, Austin, The Role of Dust in Shaping the Evolution of Galaxies
• Andrew Saydjari, Princeton University, Inferring Kinematic and Chemical Maps of Galactic Dust
• Peter Senchyna, Carnegie Observatories, Bridging the Gap: Bringing the First Galaxies into Focus with Local Laboratories
• Raphael Skalidis, California Institute of Technology, Magnetic fields in the multiphase interstellar medium
• Adam Smercina, University of Washington, A Portrait of the Triangulum: Advancing a New Frontier of Galaxy Evolution with Resolved Stars

Are we alone? – Sagan Fellows:

• Jaren Ashcraft, University of California, Santa Barbara, Optimizing the Vector Field for Next-generation Astrophysics
• Kiersten Boley, Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory, Identifying the Key Materials for Planet Formation and Evolution
• Cheng Han Hsieh, University of Texas, Austin, A Deep Dive into the Early Evolution of Protoplanetary Disk Substructures and the Onset of Planet and Star Formation
• Rafael Luque, University of Chicago, Understanding the origin and nature of sub-Neptunes
• Sarah Moran, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, From Stars to Storms: Planetary Cloud Seeding with Sulfur-based Hazes
• Shangjia Zhang, Columbia University, Probing Young Planet Populations with 3D Self-Consistent Disk Thermodynamics
• Lily Zhao, University of Chicago, Enabling Radial Velocity Detection of Earth-Twins Through Data-Driven Algorithms and Community Collaboration
• Sebastian Zieba, Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, Characterization of rocky exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres in the JWST era

An important part of the NHFP is the annual Symposium, which allows Fellows the opportunity to present results of their research, and to meet each other and the scientific and administrative staff who manage the program. The 2023 Symposium was held at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Science topics ranged through exoplanets, gravitational waves, fast radio bursts, cosmology and more. Non-science sessions included discussions about career paths, fellows’ plans for mentoring and to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the NHFP, as well as an open mic highlighting an array of talents outside of astrophysics.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland administers the NHFP on behalf of NASA, in collaboration with the Chandra X-ray Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California.

Short bios and photos of the 2024 NHFP Fellows can be found at:
https://www.stsci.edu/stsci-research/fellowships/nasa-hubble-fellowship-program/2024-nhfp-fellows

Media Contacts:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Cheryl Gundy
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD

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