Gathered in Darkness

[music playing] CREW: Oh my god.

CREW: Oh, wow.

Here comes the Baily's beads.

CREW: Oh my god.

CREW: Wow.

CREW: Are you emotional?

CREW: I'm so happy.

CREW: Me too.

CREW: Beautiful.

[music playing] SARAH KOVAC: It goes by so quickly.

It gets dark.

It usually gets cold.

You start to see a 360-degree sunset.

The birds and animals react like it's nighttime immediately, being like so mesmerized by the scale of what you're seeing in the sky feels almost unreal.

And being able to pick out planets and stars, and being able to lay eyes on something that most people never see in a lifetime, your brain can't really quite even grasp it.

And then as quickly as it comes, it's gone.

[music playing] So everybody along the path is going to experience the eclipse in some way.

For most people, going outside and looking up.

For someone who is vision impaired, to go outside and feel the temperature change and hear the birds and animals change.

For other people, it is more respectful for them to stay indoors and not view the eclipse.

AMIR CASPI: We live in an amazing universe and people forget to look up.

People forget the sun is a star.

We are on a planet orbiting a star, going through the galaxy that is going through the universe.

This kind of astronomical phenomenon is a way of reminding people that we are part of a larger universe, and there are mysteries out there that we simply don't understand that we want to solve.

Some people during the last total solar eclipse were absolutely transformed by their experience.

[music playing] We want everybody to be able to engage with science, with astronomy, with taking data.

What we hope is that, that really gets people to appreciate and understand what science is all about, what astronomy is all about.

You can participate in professional level science without being a professional.

[music playing] SARAH KOVAC: The Citizen CATE 2024 Next Generation project was built on the back of the original CATE 2017 project.

The groundwork that they laid was very invaluable for us.

They really paved the way to make this project a reality for us.

CATE 2024 is a project that has two big overarching goals.

One is to do some really unique science during a total solar eclipse, and there's also a secondary component of getting engagement into communities along that path to better help them understand what they're seeing, spark their interest, and also provide more opportunities for communities that may not have access to things like telescopes.

CATE is essentially an eclipse relay race, where as the shadow ends at one station, it gets passed on to the next.

And so we now have 3 minutes plus 3 minutes plus 3 minutes from border to border.

That came to be about 60 minutes.

And so that gives us a really unique data set.

But it is incredibly impractical to find 35 professional scientists who are going to be in these very specific places.

So the better approach is to try to engage with the communities that are actually along the path.

And so to do that, we started at the higher level looking for what we called our regional coordinators who oversaw the Southwest, Midwest, and Northeast regions.

[music playing] AMIR CASPI: So today on April 20, 2023, we are here in Exmouth, Australia, a small town on the tip of the Northwest Cape in Western Australia.

And today there's a total solar eclipse.

We have brought a team of 10 people, some of us professional scientists and six people who are team leaders for the 2024 event.

They're going to help train all of the local teams that we recruit for 2024.

They are getting first-hand experience of what it's like to take data using these pieces of equipment and using these procedures, and they will help us refine the equipment setup to make it the easiest to use.

CREW: It may be the declination balance we need to fix.

AMIR CASPI: OK.

CREW: Let's do that.

SARAH KOVAC: One of the things that makes CATE 2024 unique is that we're capturing images in polarized light.

It allows us to see different flows, different types of connections.

It also helps us render more of a 3D picture of the corona.

PAUL BRYANS: The corona is about as bright as the full moon.

The problem is that the surface of the sun is about a million times brighter than the corona, so it swamps that out and you can't see it.

A solar eclipse, you now have the moon, which is the exact right size to just cover the sun.

So then the very bright surface of the sun is blocked out, and we can now see the corona.

SARAH KOVAC: The corona is incredibly important to study because it is where the solar wind starts.

The solar wind is created in those lower regions of the sun, and the solar wind is eventually what comes and impacts us at Earth.

The more information we have about the corona, the better we can predict things.

And space weather prediction in today's technology, it's very important.

[music playing] NIKITA SAINI: So yeah, it's not.

It's a little off centered in the solar calendar.

I am the lead trainer on this project.

I'll be responsible for training all the teams in the Northeast region.

I love science research.

As a future professional astronomer, I really want to make sure that I do everything on my part to get more people interested in science.

RACHEAL WER: I'm a senior at Indiana University.

I've been studying the sun a lot.

I'm working on a solar eclipse project back in Indiana too, so all ties together, which is great.

My job, more or less, is just to be the expert on the telescope and be able to teach people how to use that telescope later on.

I'll be in charge of training the state coordinators, state teams, everything like that being on call, on standby.

If somebody needs something fixed during the 2024 eclipse.

It's going the right direction, which is always a bonus.

CREW: Yeah.

RACHEAL WER: It's exactly what I like in science, which is mostly outreach.

Growing up in a smaller community, you don't really get this kind of outreach, and it means a lot to me to be able to bring science and education in general to people who wouldn't have really had it before.

CREW: Oh, look at that.

CREW: That's weird.

SARAH DAVIS: Yeah, it's definitely gotten darker and cooler.

And, like, my body is just on edge because I know something is wrong.

CREW: All right.

Wait for it.

There it is.

CREW: We just experienced totality.

NIKITA SAINI: I have goosebumps right now as I'm like talking about it.

It's like, wow.

SARAH DAVIS: I'm like shaking.

Oh my god.

AMIR CASPI: The corona was a lot brighter than I thought it would be.

It was this glowing ring of fire around this black hole, which was the moon.

This went flawlessly.

CREW: Nice, except your live stream.

AMIR CASPI: But except for the live stream.

In the field, nothing quite goes as planned.

And our live stream wasn't working quite right, so we had to improvise.

For me, it was only a few short, tens of seconds to look at the eclipse, but even that was something unique.

It really gives me an idea of what I can expect.

In 2024, people will have up to 4.5 minutes of that experience.

It's going to feel like the shortest 4.5 minutes of your life, but it will be transcendent.

SARAH KOVAC: Once we had all of our CATE teams recruited, they had a few responsibilities.

The first one was to attend their local training workshops.

State coordinators had their own local training workshop.

For the most of those workshops, they spent outside on the sun, practicing on-hand with the equipment.

And so by having the state coordinators and the lead trainers there to help support those in-person meetings, the teams were able to at least get through one full dry run.

After that, teams took their equipment home with them, so they had everything that they needed for eclipse day.

[music playing] JENNIFER MILLER-RAY: Sometimes, we don't think when we think about eclipse, how important educators are, we can inspire the next astrophysicist, the next science journalist, the next scientific artist.

We can inspire that next generation and also just help with the science literacy in our entire area.

We have a lot of regions that don't have a lot of resources, and we're excited to bring real-world problem-solving events so that we can make connections to what we might be learning about, either in school or on the news, because this is a really big event, and we have lots of people coming in.

CATARINO MORALES III: And that's really what it is.

It's that spark, that first spark in the eyes of our community members, of our kids, of those that have never been exposed to sciences per se.

This project brings the science to life.

KIRA BAASCH: That's really cool.

We should be getting a lot of sunspots right now.

Team New England is doing good.

It's like a summer's day here.

I am at Butler University, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana.

That is along the path of totality.

Like, I'm so excited to be my first solo solar eclipse.

And also, I'm really excited to be able to help people out.

That is the main reason why I plan to do it.

I want to be able to teach people about eclipses.

We're learning how to be like professionals, and we're going to be teaching all of them how to use these telescopes, how to be safe when pointing a telescope at the sun.

And then we're also learning about community engagement, about community outreach, and, of course, the science of solar physics because we have such a large array of people here.

So it's really cool.

[music playing] LORI HUCK: I'm a undergraduate at Oklahoma State University, double majoring in geology and geospatial information science.

We did training in Arkansas for two days and then just getting together and practicing.

It's been a great, interesting experience because I'm Native, so the eclipse is very close to my culture in Cherokee.

The belief is that the eclipse is a giant frog eating the sun, so we have to go out and bang our drums, shoot arrows at the frog to try and get it to stop, just to connecting more to my culture through stuff like this.

It's given me a bigger community.

I've been working with new people and gotten to meet new people, and I'm just really enjoyed working with everybody.

KATY KISER: Everything just fell into place right place, right time, kind of thing.

Trying to understand all the technology because you can't just like, only understand your part.

You have to understand everyone else's part in order to like if something goes wrong.

That was the most challenging was putting all those connections together.

But that brought us closer together as a team.

[music playing] KATRINA HALASA: My name is Dr. Katrina Halasa.

I'm the science and health learning specialist K through 12 at Akron Public Schools.

I think science at its best is opening up students curiosity.

They're curious.

They want to know.

Kids start to drift a little further away from the curiosity, and I think that's the thing that I want to see happening more with young people is that just asking questions, not being afraid to be wrong.

That's what science does.

Understanding that the world is constantly changing, and that there's so much new and interesting things to observe and be part of.

I want kids to just love the world that they're in.

OGHENEOVO ERHO: Animal crackers.

CREW: Ogheneovo.

OGHENEOVO ERHO: Cheese graters.

CREW: Why are you saying random things?

OGHENEOVO ERHO: I mean, why?

I'm just testing the mic.

Like I just want to make sure it's working.

We are practicing setting up the equipment, leveling the telescope, and finding the direction of the sun.

Trying to find the sunspots.

Trying to get comfortable with the equipment before we actually film the eclipse.

ELIJAH FLEMING: We are also using software that I have not used or seen before, but once that we're actually learned about it, and we got a few practices in with it.

It's easier than what it looks like.

OGHENEOVO ERHO: I like it a lot more because I get to work with my hands, and I get to see all the moving parts.

It's one thing to just read about something, but to actually be there and experimenting and messing with all the parts and seeing what everything does and how they're important.

I really appreciate that, and honestly, it's really fun.

ELIJAH FLEMING: I like working out in the field instead of being cooped up in a classroom.

I love doing hands on things, so this is helping me learn about the solar eclipse and the equipment way easier and way better than if I'm in the classroom trying to learn about it myself.

OGHENEOVO ERHO: It's such a fun environment to finally get to collaborate with each other and actually get to see other people with different views on their own interests.

It can really open your eyes and make you more open minded.

And that willingness to want to cooperate and help other people really a valuable skill to be able to cooperate with other people.

ELIJAH FLEMING: And sometimes other people have way different backgrounds than what you have.

And when you apply them together, it's like you can find new strategies, new ideas, and new problem-solving thinking.

When we're all put together in this program, it's like we thought we were all different.

But turns out we are only different in certain aspects.

We all want to do something with science.

[music playing] DAVE SMITH: Go back again.

OK. North is 412907 CREW: 07?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

My name is Dave Smith.

I'm from Kent, Ohio, and we volunteered to be on this team to record the eclipse tomorrow.

I'm an engineer.

I've worked on lots of solar projects as well as many other kinds of energy projects.

And so I have interest in the sun.

BRAD BOLTON: My name is Brad Bolton.

I live in Twin Lakes, Kent, Ohio, but I always had kept an interest in science.

Then later on, I started finding out about Citizen Science projects.

Citizen science is important to me just because I love it, and I get to see things in nature that I normally would never get to see.

But also, it's really important to the science body at large.

DAVE SMITH: And this is my first Citizen Science project.

This came up, and it sounded interesting, and it was a good way to observe the eclipse this year.

And the totality is going to come right over Cleveland.

We've practiced at a number of sites here in Cleveland and down in Kent, so that we can set up the telescope.

We expect a big crowd tomorrow.

We're going to get here early and get everything set up.

MARIO BORUNDA: Excited, cold though.

CREW: Is it warmer outside?

I'm cold still.

LUIS OTERO: It's a little bit cloudy, but I think we'll be fine.

We'll be able to measure stuff to see the eclipse in totality.

At least, I hope.

[music playing] CREW: Whoa.

CREW: Beautiful.

CREW: Whoa.

CREW: Oh my god.

CREW: Oh my god.

CREW: That is beautiful.

CREW: That is beautiful.

CREW: That's insane.

CREW: Oh, my gosh.

Fantastic CREW: Did you see that?

CREW: Did you see the stars?

CREW: Oh.

[celebrating] CREW: That's insane.

CREW: I don't want to look at it.

It's going to go away.

CREW: Look at the-- [interposing voices] CREW: The tentacles.

CREW: Yes.

[interposing voices] CREW: It looks so cool.

CREW: Isn't it?

CREW: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: But when it went total and the sun was blocked, it was a real surprise because the last bit of the sun was a bright flash, and then suddenly it was dark in an annulus of light that lasted a little over 3 minutes, and then poof, the sun popped back.

Now, it's tracking off again.

CREW: 5 minutes before it started, everything started going quiet like not just the adults and the wildlife, but also the children that were playing on the playground.

It's like they had that sense of knowing that it's time to calm down and look at the solar eclipse.

And it was truly beautiful.

EDWARD McHENRY III: People were hushed with anticipation and all the natural world was quiet, too.

It was pretty neat that people were able to be quiet.

CREW: Usually, when you hear about crazy events or things like eclipses, tornadoes, earthquakes, and other phenomena out in the world, it's usually something that you don't experience yourself.

It's a completely different thing entirely when you get to see these things in person.

Yeah, I felt a little small.

Not in a bad way.

It was awe inspiring, honestly.

Long neat would be an understatement because that was insane.

Being able to be there in that situation and environment, and being able to just see it with my own eyes, and it was just life changing.

CREW: Oh my gosh.

CREW: Make sure your polarized sunglasses.

EDWARD McHENRY III: The darkness with the outer corona visible makes it look almost as if the sun was replaced with a black hole for a minute.

CREW: Never in a million years, I would have thought this would have been this beautiful.

Seeing the eclipse re-sparks my curiosity for astronomy way more than when I was a little kid.

And it's also shown me that I could also be in a career field where I'm not only going to learn and work, but also have fun and stay curious while I'm doing my job, I can put that together and be like a mechanical engineer for like NASA that we're working with today.

And pretty much do what I love to do.

EDWARD McHENRY III: It reaffirms the reasons why I would want to pursue a career in, for example, astronomy.

It's knowledge that we've gained due to trial and error, allowing us to build a better system for learning things.

I mean, we're small, but we're not insignificant or significance only as a meaning on our level.

[music playing] MARIO BORUNDA: I'm so glad we get to do all of this work, but it was well worth just to see those 4 minutes of darkness and seeing the ring around the moon.

This was great, and I'm really happy also that I got to do it with my family and friends right here.

LORI HUCK: I'm very glad I came here.

It's really neat looking at all this, the waves and the corona.

YOLANDA VASQUEZ: It was just like-- ah!

Just when I took the cover off, I was just-- I looked straight up, I was like, whoa.

Fantastic.

It was really good.

MARCIA LONG: When we get to this point now, and we're at totality and seeing everybody just in total awe, looking at the sky and laughing and hugging, and it was like so cool.

CREW: Wow.

CREW: Wow.

BAYLAN MOZON: I got invited by a friend to the eclipse.

There was a bunch of different people from different backgrounds.

The sky is changing colors, and then boom, the sky goes from blue to pretty much pitch dark.

And I look up, and it's just like this glowing freaking object.

Obviously, the sun.

And just seeing that through the eclipse glasses, I'm like, OK, now I see why so many people have came together to really just get together and really just look at something so magical.

HSIAO-CHUN LIN: I just learned setting up the telescope two months ago.

And I can do it now, so it's easy for anyone to learn how to set up the telescope and how to observe the sun.

And I've never seen this before.

I was really excited, and we just saw that when the moon covered the sun just about a few minutes ago, and it was really fun.

People were screaming.

And then, well, and we see the sky became really dark and some of the lights were on during the totality.

And we also see some the corona.

It's also my first time to see the corona, and also the plume that ejected out of the sun's atmosphere, so it was really cool.

CREW: I think today was amazing because it allowed everything to come together-- All the hard work, all the energy, all the stress.

It all works out in the long run because kids are excited.

They're talking about future things, and they have new friendships.

I think the fact that NASA and NSF put something together where they have citizen scientists across the country coming together, people who may be interested in science or invested in science or may have no investment in science personally, but just by interest, is, again, this is the epitome of what it means to be in science.

Being curious, learning things about the world, observing and collecting data to explain patterns and observations.

[music playing] SARAH KOVAC: We reached out and recruited people who had no astronomy background.

We did not require any prior experience.

We presented them with all the equipment and all of the training.

And so for many students, it was also their first time seeing an eclipse.

That alone was really exciting.

Knowing that you are a part of something bigger, knowing that the team's success relies on all the teams participating, and we had 100% participation on Eclipse day.

Knowing that they're doing something that is contributing to greater knowledge and a better understanding of our universe, it's something that I think they have found really rewarding, and I certainly did.

Post eclipse, we're still having meetings with our coordinators fairly regularly.

We want to make sure that these telescopes are still being used, that they are accessible to the entire community.

I know many schools have been using the telescope for star parties, Other outreach events.

We've made this nice little niche community now that has these resources.

We had 225 plus participants in this project.

My hope is that it's just given them some kind of inspiration, whether that is STEM based or not.

My hope is that folks who go on to do music or art find inspiration in what they've done with CATE, and there will be some people who really enjoyed the hands on part of this, or are going to really enjoy the data analysis part of this, and they're going to find that this is what scientists do every day, and maybe that it doesn't even necessarily have to be solar physics, but just gets them thinking about what opportunities might be out there.

My hope is that everyone who participated has been inspired in some way that this is going to impact their lives.

[music playing]