More than a thousand University students, faculty and staff took a break from the first day of classes to observe the Great American Eclipse at the Parade Ground on Aug. 21.
According to NASA’s official website, a solar eclipse is when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, blocking all or part of the sun for up to three hours from a given location. For this eclipse, the longest the moon completely blocked the sun was for two minutes and 40 seconds. In Baton Rouge, the greatest coverage was seen around 1:30 p.m., with the moon blocking 80 percent of the sun. The last time the U.S. experienced a total eclipse was in 1979, according to NASA.
Eclipse glasses were available for students and faculty with valid Tiger Cards, though there were not enough for everyone to have their own pair.
Information about the University’s science and research programs were available. The science departments and some student organizations present were Campus Life, the Office of Research and Economic Development, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science, the LSU Museum of Natural Science and Undergraduate Research.
Guest speakers included University physics and astronomy professor Gabriela Gonzalez, assistant professor of physics and astronomy Manos Chatzopoulos, Department of Physics Chair John DiTusa and WAFB Chief Meteorologist Jay Grymes.
“Eventually, total eclipses not eclipses in totality, but total eclipses will be a thing of the past because the moon is slowly moving away from the earth at a rate of a couple centimeters per year,” DiTusa said. “So if you wait around for a good million years the moon will be too far away and won’t totally block out the sun in any eclipse.”
According to authors of “Totality: The Great American Eclipses of 2017 and 2024,” Mark Littmann and Fred Espenak, when the moon’s mean distance from the Earth has increased by 14,550 miles (23,410 kilometers), the moon’s apparent disk will be too small to cover the entire sun, even when the moon’s elliptical orbit carries it closest to Earth.
Anyone in North America was able to see a partial solar eclipse, but a total solar eclipse could only be seen in the path of totality. The path was about 70 miles wide across Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. DiTusa said the last time the solar eclipse was seen coast to coast in the U.S. was in 1918.
A team of students, faculty and staff from the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, or LaSPACE, led by the University, travelled to Carbondale, Illinois to launch two large weather balloons. The team live-streamed aerial footage of the moon’s shadow as it crossed the country today during the solar eclipse.

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Kim Nguyen

Onlookers observe the eclipse with equipment provided by CxC at the Parade Ground on Aug. 21, 2017.