![\"(Photograph](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2017\/08\/noah-petro-NASA-2017-18893_003.jpg\")
<\/a>A deputy project scientist for NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Noah Petro ’01 will represent NASA at a minor league baseball game in Oregon, the first to experience an eclipse delay. (Photograph by W. Hrybyk \/ NASA)<\/p><\/div>\n
The game will stop after the first inning for the eclipse. The delay will last about 30 minutes to give everyone time to get ready for totality. The moments of darkest shadow will last about 2 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving never seen a total eclipse, I’ll just try to soak it all in,\u201d says Petro, who lives in Alexandria Va., and works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.<\/p>\n
Still, he\u2019ll been looking carefully. \u201cI’ll keep my eye peeled for Venus which should be visible (as well as a few other planets), I’ll look for structure in the corona which is only visible during totality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petro says that the eclipse delay will be the first in the history of professional baseball, and perhaps professional sports. (In February 1980, a cricket match in India was postponed a day to avoid playing during a partial eclipse.)<\/p>\n
\u201cGene Clough would be proud,\u201d Petro says, referencing beloved Bates physics and geology faculty member, now retired.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople should take eye safety very seriously, regardless where they are,\u201d he advises. \u201cNASA has a series of safe viewing tips<\/a>. Folks should take the opportunity to look at the eclipse (safely), no matter where they are.”<\/p>\n The NASA mission I work on, LRO, has \u201ccreated the highest-resolution topographic map of any planet in the solar system,\u201d he says. That means that NASA will be able to create \u201c the most accurate map of the shape of the eclipse \u2014 the shadow of the moon \u2014 ever.”<\/p>\n About 40 miles south of Petro\u2019s baseball game, Chris Parrish \u201993 and Deborah Kurnik \u201993 are letting their 12-year-old daughter, Katherine, take the lead.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s very excited about the eclipse,\u201d Parrish says. Katherine has a treat planned: \u201cCelebratory moon pies,\u201d says Kurnik.<\/p>\n Forty miles south of Noah Petro ’01, in Corvalis, Ore., Christopher Parrish \u201993 and Deborah Kurnick \u201993 have moon pies ready for Monday.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll watch the eclipse from our own backyard,\u201d says Parrish, an associate professor of geomatics in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University.<\/p>\n Like other colleges and universities in the path of totality, Oregon State is using the event to shine light on their contributions to science and education. Oregon State\u2019s program is called the Space Grant Festival.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe will be volunteering to help out at kids’ activity stations on both Saturday and Sunday,\u201d says Kurnik, who is a grant writer in the College of Engineering.<\/p>\n Eight hundred miles to the east in Idaho Falls, Idaho, retired special education teacher Barbara McIntosh is marveling at the crowds \u2014 500,000 predicted to descend on her city, population 60,000.<\/p>\n Public officials are warning that the “usual four-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Idahol Falls could take eight hours.\u201d<\/p>\n As for plans, she and her husband, Kenison, will watch from their back yard or a park across the street.<\/p>\n Eighty-eight miles to the east in Jackson, Wyo., Carrie Noel Richer \u201901 works at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, where she\u2019s coordinating Observatories<\/a><\/em>, a large-scale exhibition comprising 10 installations that use the eclipse \u201cas a great lens to think about all that the eclipse brings to mind, while also commenting on the meaning and ideals of ‘the West.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s eager to witness a distinctive eclipse phenomena. \u201cGo to a tree and look in the shade of the tree\u2019s shadow.\u00a0You will see\u00a0hundreds\u00a0of crescent images of the partially covered sun all over the ground.\u00a0Too cool!\u201d<\/p>\n Featured in the exhibition Observatories,<\/em> the sculpture “Hollow Earth” is made from glass and wood that creates the illusion of a tunnel descending deep into the Earth, housed in an abandoned shed. (Photograph courtesy of the Center for the Arts)<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Jason Hall \u201997 has been a civic and business leader in St. Louis since 2005 when he teamed up with fellow lawyers to start Lawyers for Equality, the first gay lawyers\u2019 association in the region.<\/p>\n Today, he\u2019s co-founder and managing director of a start-up civic initiative, the Arch to Park Collaborative, in St. Louis.<\/p>\n Jason Hall ’97 will be able to step outside his office and experience the eclipse.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cI feel pretty lucky that I\u2019ll be walking outside of my office and taking the moment in so easily,\u201d he says. \u201cI am surprised at how Monday is turning into the equivalent of a national holiday around here!\u201d<\/p>\n Just outside totality, he\u2019ll be at casual watch party that\u2019s being hosted \u201cin our urban innovation district in St. Louis, the Cortex Innovation Community,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, I\u2019ll be surrounded by many other entrepreneurs and innovators enjoying the historic moment.\u201d<\/p>\n About 130 miles to the southeast of Jason Hall, Sandra Shea \u201975 is near ground zero for the eclipse. There, the totality will be its longest: 2 minutes and 37 seconds.<\/p>\n In the southern part of Illinois, Carbondale, where Sandra Shea ’75 lives and works, is considered ground zero for the eclipse.<\/p><\/div>\n She works at Southern Illinois University. Along with around 15,000 others, she\u2019ll be at SIU\u2019s Saluki Stadium with NASA scientists and astronomers from Chicago\u2019s Adler Planetarium.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be with family and friends, including a friend from Bates, Jean Seitzer Storrs \u201978, and her family.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s completely captivated by the event. \u201cI\u2019m a nerd, I admit it,\u201d she says. \u201cEverything about the eclipse is interesting. I teach psychology and neuroscience at the School of Medicine, so science is everywhere, every day.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen partial eclipses but never a total. And we get to do it again in 2024 when another total eclipse will cross Southern Illinois in almost exactly the same place!\u201d<\/p>\n Carbondale officials expect 70,000 visitors to the town, which has a population of 26,000; state officials predict up to 200,000 to the southern part of the state.<\/p>\n Special events are everywhere, Shea says: an Eclipse Comic Con at the university, craft fairs, and days of concerts in different towns. There\u2019s Shadowfest in Carbondale \u00a0and Moonstock in Carterville. At the latter, Ozzy Osbourne will be singing \u201cBark at the Moon\u201d as the sky goes dark.\u201d<\/p>\n Two hundred miles to the east, in Bowling Green, Ken., Elizabeth Lemerise \u201974 is making the most of her location.<\/p>\n The University Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Western Kentucky University, she\u2019s going to watch from home, about 10 miles south of campus.<\/p>\n In Bowling Green, Ky., Elizabeth Lemerise ’74 is making the most of her location.<\/p><\/div>\n At home, \u201cthere\u2019s a longer totality than on campus \u2014 1 minutes, 20 seconds, instead of about 50 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that she’ll skip the first day of classes at her university. The school has pushed back the start of classes until 4 p.m.<\/p>\n Like others, she\u2019s amazed at the predicted throngs and is heeding the warnings from public-safety officials.<\/p>\n \u201cKentucky expects half a million people to come for the eclipse. Every hotel room in town is booked for the night before, at ridiculous prices, too. The locals have been advised to get their gas and groceries and to stay home!\u201d<\/p>\n Uh-oh.<\/p>\n \u201cTo my horror,\u201d reports Marty Braman Duckenfield, \u201cI discovered that our big<\/em> family gathering is this coming week on Cape Cod. With so many moving parts, plus a contract signed last summer, I will be in Barnstable, Mass.”<\/p>\n There, about 63 percent of the sun will get covered on Monday. “The skies look clear, it\u2019s a perfect place for viewing, and I\u2019ll be surrounded by those I love,” she says. Though it’s a “major blow,” to miss totality, “I’m trying to look at the bright side.”<\/p>\n Duckenfield is an associate producer for Clemson Broadcast Productions, which \u201chas a full court press to record it all, in the skies and down here on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n How to avoid the eclipse crowds? Kayak into the middle of a lake, says Katherine Bernier ’11.<\/p><\/div>\n Katherine Bernier \u201911 has a plan to avoid the mobs of eclipsers. She and friends from Richmond, Va., have rented kayaks and will paddle far from the madding crowds on a local lake. \u201cGreenville and Clemson University are supposed to be crazy!\u201d<\/p>\n Bernier is starting her second year of a master\u2019s program for environmental planning at Clemson.<\/p>\n What\u2019s impressed Bernier is \u201clots of planning. I\u2019m glad that schools are either starting late or allowing students to leave early.” She\u2019s also noticing \u201ca focus on education\u201d about the eclipse. For example, the Greenville Zoo is supposed to be packed for observing the animal reactions<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI guess I can say I’m disappointed how ridiculous the pricing is for plane flights down here, due to the demand.\u201d<\/p>\n For Monthe Kofos, it\u2019s location, location, location.<\/p>\n He lives a few miles south of Manning, S.C., on Lake Marion. “The exact center of the path passes straight over my house,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\nChris Parrish \u201993 and Deborah Kurnik ’93 \u2014 Corvallis, Ore. \u2014 10:16:56 a.m. PDT<\/h3>\n
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\nBarbara McIntosh ’59 \u2014 Idaho Falls, Idaho \u2014 11:33:04 a.m. MDT<\/h3>\n
<\/a>\u201cNo rooms are available,\u201d she says, \u201cWe are being told to have gas, food, and water on hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nCarrie Noel Richer \u201901 \u2014 Jackson, Wyo. \u2014 11:34:56 a.m. MDT<\/h3>\n
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\nAs for Richer\u2019s personal plans, her parents and a friends are in town for the event. \u201cWe are going to disappear into the Greys National Forest to a secret spot,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nJason Hall ’97 \u2014 St. Louis (just outside totality) \u2014 1:18:00 CDT<\/h3>\n
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\nSandra Shea \u201975 \u2014\u00a0Carbondale, Ill. \u2014 1:20:05 p.m. CDT<\/h3>\n
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\nElizabeth Lemerise ’74 \u2014 Bowling Green, Ken. \u2014 1:27:34 p.m. CDT<\/h3>\n
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\nMarty Braman Duckenfield ’67 \u2014 2:37:10 p.m. EDT \u2014 Clemson, S.C.<\/h3>\n
\nKatherine Bernier ’11 \u2014 2:38:03 p.m. EDT \u2014 Greenville, S.C.<\/h3>\n
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\nMonthe Kofos \u201911 \u2014 Manning, S.C. \u2014 2:44:02 p.m. EDT<\/h3>\n