2024 Solar Eclipse Watch Party

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1:36 2024 Solar Eclipse Watch Party

By:

Ray Meese

8 Apr 2024 990

Thousands of Hokies gathered as the College of Science along with the Department of Physics hosted a solar eclipse watch party on the Drillfield. A brief break in the cloud cover offered a glimpse of a partial eclipse, but the sight was quickly obscured by more clouds.

We have way more than 1,000 people here. Most are Virginia Tech students, and we are trying to observe the solar eclipse of 2024. We have here ten telescopes in which we can observe that. We hope for a break in the cloud because right now it's totally cloudy. A college of science have a strong presence here. They're distributing glasses that are safe to look at the Sun. And they're also distribute some 150 T shirts by Raffle. Yeah, the eclipse here at 3:15 will be 88% of the Sun will be covered. So at that point, we should see a visible drop in the solar light compared to normally three 15 in the afternoon. And hopefully we'll be able to see that with the glasses and with the telescope. There are people in Virginia Tech in the engineering department. They are studying the ionosphere. They're actually going in a jet over the eclipse path. There is another group from space VT, that is just launched a balloon 20, 30 minutes ago to observe the eclipse from 60,000 feet. Virginia Tech has a strong presence in actually doing some research on the eclipse, but for us, it's mainly for viewing pleasure.

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