COLLEGE TOWN EMBR ACES GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE
ECLIPSE, FROM PAGE 1:
Planetarium in Chicago and the National Solar Observatory in Boulder. With the support of those institutions, they plan to entertain and educate thousands of visitors, while ensuring that scientists can take full advantage of a rare opportunity.
From $25 seats in the stadium, which holds 15,000 people, attendees will watch a NASA eclipse pregame show on the scoreboard. The university will also participate in a countrywide experiment to film totality coast to coast.
Off campus, the city has its own prep work. Carbondale, like many other cities throughout Southern Illinois, has struggled economically in recent years because of the state’s budget crisis. Officials hope the eclipse will be a boon for local businesses, and the tourism industry expects it could bring in millions of dollars.
“The biggest challenge has been trying to get people to understand how big this could be,” said Gary Williams, city manager of Carbondale.
NASA has told local officials to expect about 50,000 people, but Williams and others have warned that the community could be swarmed with many more.
“There’s no game plan, no playbook for this,” said Steven Mitchell, the city’s economic development director. “We’re completely flying blind and making up the rules as we go.”
Every available hotel room has long been booked, with one hotel selling out in March 2016, according to Cinnamon Smith, executive director of Carbondale Tourism.
Some rooms went for $499 a night with a three-night minimum, she said. People have called from Europe, Japan, Panama and Brazil seeking to snag a spot for what the city’s brochures call the “Total Eclipse of the Heartland.”
Carbondale will host a free music festival called Shadowfest, which officials will spin into an annual event leading up to the 2024 eclipse.
But much depends on the weather. If forecasts show cloudy skies in Carbondale, the crowds may not come. Alternatively, if things look dismal everywhere else nearby, then even more people might flock here.
Some businesses are skeptical, while others have caught full-on eclipse fever.
“I think it’s hyped up. People are making it bigger than it is,” said Jeremy Clow, who runs Saluki Craft, a local art supply shop. “I don’t think it’ll be as big as everyone says it will be.”
But the attitude is different a street over at 710 Bookstore.
“When people ask what’s the big deal, I say ‘Google it,’” said Randy Johnson, a managing partner of the bookstore. “For the eclipse groupies, this is Mecca.”
Already he has sold more than 600 T-shirts and has stocked up on eclipse hats, coffee mugs and beer koozies.
“Every time I see something I think, ‘Wow, maybe we can put an eclipse logo on it,’” Johnson said.
2 minutes 38 seconds
As an eclipse reaches totality, the sun’s wispy outer atmosphere, known as the corona, appears to spill out from behind the moon. The ethereal crown has long puzzled astronomers: It blazes at more than 1 million degrees Celsius, yet the sun’s surface burns at around a mere 5,500 degrees Celsius.
That’s counterintuitive — like getting warmer the farther away you walk from a campfire.
Normally the corona is invisible from Earth. But it appears when the moon blocks the much brighter solar disk. Totality offers scientists their best opportunity to uncover its scorching secrets.
From Saluki Stadium, Yanamandra-fisher will investigate how light is scattered in the inner part of the corona, a property known as its polarization. The information could provide insight into how electrons inside the corona are arranged, which could help researchers understand the source of the atmosphere’s intense heat.
During her scouting trip, Yanamandra-fisher searched for the best place to set up her equipment. She considered the university’s “dark site,” a location established away from people and bright lights. Its 10 concrete pads were designed as vibration-free platforms for telescopes, but scientists who work at the more rugged site will probably need to camp beside their equipment.
So she selected the stadium, which offers an unobstructed view of the sky while being closer to the heart of Carbondale.
“I’m projecting that the sun will be approximately there when totality hits,” she said, etching an imaginary rectangle with her finger. “If I can fit three suns across in a field of view, that would be pretty nice.”
Her telescope needs that real estate in the sky to capture intricate details of the corona, whose tendrils can stretch millions of miles from the surface. With her location picked out, she must now focus on perfecting her strategy for those 2 minutes and 38 seconds.
“You have to go through your procedure over and over,” she said, “so you don’t make mistakes.”
The stadium will also have several high-powered telescopes capable of providing unparalleled views of the partial phases of the eclipse.
The images will be recorded by a mobile solar observatory called the Sunlab that was built by Lunt Solar Systems, a telescope company in Tucson, Ariz. The observatory connects to a heliostat mounted outside, which tracks the sun
A magical place
Hoping to share that wonderment with the students and guests, the university has ordered more than 50,000 solar eclipse glasses, organized festivities and canceled classes on the day of the event. In June administrators opened up a dormitory hall with 200 suites for visitors to rent, about half of which are now booked.
Whether their efforts will draw students to the spectacle is another question. “I don’t want to be in a stadium with someone explaining the sky to me,” said Kelechi Agwuncha, 19, a junior filmmaker at the university. “I’d rather take it in myself.”
But some see the eclipse as an important opportunity for their school and city.
“A lot of students couldn’t care less. Because it’s Carbondale, they think it can’t be something that big,” said Diamond Trusty, 20, a senior who is a volunteer with the campus marketing team for the eclipse events.
But she plans to change those sentiments. “I want to let them know this is a landmark historical moment that we have to be a part of.”
Sam Beard, 23, a philosophy major, agreed. “It offers a chance to prove to the outside that this place is magical, it’s a gem, and it’s not flyover country,” he said.