BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – As thousands are expected to travel to Burlington this weekend, the Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain is hosting an eclipse festival with activities for all.
Eclipse excitement is here in the Green Mountain State, and the Echo Center has many educational activities planned. Chris Dwyer of the Echo Center has studied the eclipse in-depth and was happy to shed light on some misconceptions about the solar event.
“Well, as you may know, a solar eclipse is when the moon blocks out the light of the sun, which you may not know – is that our Moon is a lot smaller than our Sun. We have a model of the Sun right up there. Really big and hanging in our museum. And compared to the Sun, our Moon is about as big as this pencil eraser to our huge model over there. Even though it’s so small, it’s able to block out the sun completely. And that’s because even though it’s really tiny compared to the Sun, it’s also a lot closer to us,” Dwyer said.
Dwyer showcased an activity where someone could simulate an eclipse by using a crafted moon on a stick.
“If you can try to hold it between yourself and the moon. You can simulate an eclipse by blocking out that sun in front of your vision. Yeah, even though this ball, this moon is so much smaller than the big one hanging there, it’s able to block it out just based on how far away you are. As it turns out, the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun, but it’s also about 400 times closer to Earth than the Sun is. And because of that crazy coincidence, Earth is the only planet we know of that gets a total solar eclipse,” he said.
ECLIPSE EYEWEAR
Many of us have eclipse fever going into the weekend, but it’s important to make sure you have the right protective eyewear. The Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain is hosting a festival starting Friday morning, and the center’s Chris Dwyer has some advice for onlookers.
“So even though there is an eclipse and the Sun is going to be blocked by the Moon, it is still the Sun. It is still sunlight that you’re looking at when you’re viewing an eclipse. And so you do need to protect your eyes. We have a few different tools that we’re going to be using for people who visit Echo during the eclipse. The most common one is our little eclipse glasses that we’ll be passing out. But we also have some other tools. These are some regular binoculars,” Dwyer said, “We fitted them with a filter paper that blocks out most light so you can only use it to look at the Sun.”
Echo also kept young children in mind when planning for the event.
“We had so much of that filter left over that we were able to make some other tools for some smaller folks who maybe aren’t able to manipulate glasses. So we have these face shields for infants that you can put on and they’ll be able to look at the sky. It doesn’t require any adjustment like the binoculars do,” said Dwyer. “If you have a small child at Echo, and you’d like them to be able to safely view the eclipse an Echo staff member member will be able to provide one of these for you.”
Click here for all our eclipse coverage to help you get ready for the big day.