DARK SHADOWS

‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye breaks down Monday’s rare solar eclipse

BILL Nye is shedding some light on Monday’s solar eclipse, which he kiddingly — or maybe not — calls “the most important thing ever.” Nye, known to a generation of kids from PBS’ “Bill Nye the Science Guy” — he now hosts “Bill Nye Saves the World” on Netflix — talks excitedly about Monday’s solar eclipse which, for the first time since February 1979, will darken the skies over the entire country when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun.

“It’s a little unusual,” says Nye, who’s also the CEO of The Planetary Society (co-founded founded byby Carl Sagan) “There are a pair of solar eclipses every two years, but this one is going right across one of the world’s most populous countries — not over the ocean or over the Arctic Circle but right across the US. You couldn’t design it any better.

“I love to consider this,” he says. “The Moon is so mountainous that there’s a moment where you see these beads of light, called ‘Bailey’s Beads,’ which are points of bright light between the edge of the Moon and the mountains of the Moon, which is a very rough, crater-ridden, pockmarked place — and you can see these during a total eclipse.”

Nye, 61, says the eclipse will last roughly two minutes in most parts of the US — but how much

you’ll actactually depends on where you are in the country. “In Clayton, Ga. it will hit at 2:35 p.m., which is pretty close to the time it will be over New York,” he says. “In New York, you’ll have a partial eclipse of around 70 percent which, in the middle of the day, is like a sunset. There’s always the danger of getting ‘weathered out,’ in which case it won’t be especially dark. In Georgia or Washington, DC you’ll have an 80 percent blockage of the sun. That’s huge — it’s almost like a sunset or dawn and it’s an exciting thing to see.”

It’s necessary to wear special glasses if you’re going to look directly at the eclipse; staring at the sun, even in its briefly altered state, can cause “eclipse blindness” (burns to the retina that can damage eyesight). “They cut out almost all the light, like a welder’s glass,” Nye says of the glasses. “The eclipse is so amazing that we all tend to stare at it. If you stare at the sun you hurt your eyes. The glasses [The Planetary Society] shipped ran out — the suppliers couldn’t meet the demand.”

So where will Nye be watching the eclipse?

“I’ll be in Homestead National Monument in Beatrice, Neb. with Michael Reynolds, the [acting] director of The National Park Service,” he says. “The Planetary Society and the Park Service go way back. Beatrice is in the center of the country and it’s open; though there are some Nebraska hills there, you can see a long way.

“The pure, complete totality [of the eclipse] there will be only one minute and eight seconds, but the dimming of the light and the effective totality will go on for almost an hour.

[The eclipse will be covered live on TV by many broadcast and cable networks.]

“It’s always exciting, and I just encourage everybody to take those few minutes and notice what’s happening,” Nye says. “The big picture for me is that this is a celebration of science, what humans can do that apparently no other organism does: think deeply about the cosmos and about our place in space.”