Many students and staff at Manhattan High, like millions across the country, witnessed a rare full solar eclipse this month.
While many from MHS viewed the total eclipse in August 2017, this year’s event, where the moon passed directly between the sun and the Earth, achieved totality for about twice as long.
Solar eclipses, or the event of the moon passing directly between the sun and the Earth, are relatively rare.
“The moon was in between the sun and the moon and lined up with both,” science department head Clancey Livingston said. Livingston stepped outside his classroom near the cemetery to get a short glimpse of the eclipse. He viewed the 2017 eclipse from the same spot, when an eclipse occurred most recently.
Some students and teachers even traveled to any of the 13 states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine) to experience the total solar eclipse.
“It’s not going to happen in North America for another 25 years,” junior Lara Strother said.
Students such as Strother consider themselves fortunate to be able to experience a full solar eclipse once again. Because the universe was designed as a gigantic clock, it can be predicted exactly when and where the next solar eclipse will take place, as, before 2017, the most recent total solar eclipse in the United States was in 1918. Another six will occur during the remainder of the 21st century.
Solar Eclipse Glasses were developed as a way to view a solar eclipse in the 1970’s, and are a safe way to view a solar eclipse. Often made of polyester film coated in aluminum, they are 100,000 times darker than normal sunglasses.
The next solar eclipse will take place on April 8, 2044, visible from Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. After that, the next eclipse will be visible in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, tiny slivers of Texas and Louisiana, and right here in Kansas on August 12, 2045.
“It was really neat,” Livingston said, “They just don’t happen that often.
