In the Path of Totality: Eclipse 2024!

A total solar eclipse darkened a swath of North America as the Moon blocked the light of the Sun for a few minutes on April 8, 2024. The Moon’s shadow raced across the Earth at 1950 kph, with an umbral path 275 km wide. In addition to casting a breathtaking, passing shadow over the heads of millions of people, this total solar eclipse gave scientists a unique opportunity to study the Sun, Earth, and their interactions.

As a NASA partner, GMRI and Learning Ecosystems Northeast are excited to join the effort to make sure educators and youth both on and off the path of totality have the chance to engage with this exciting event.

The Learning Ecosystems Northeast team has curated a collection of resources that reinforce our commitment to connecting in- and out-of-school learning. Activities suitable for classrooms, libraries, after-school programs, camps and 4-H programs, and numerous other settings will allow communities to engage youth in learning about and modeling eclipses. Community science investigations support understanding the changes during an eclipse as temperatures drop and environmental sounds change. We have attended particularly to non-visual ways to experience an eclipse, given the possibility of cloud cover or precipitation in the path of totality. We have deliberately chosen learning experiences that can be done before and after the day of the eclipse, leaving that day completely open for sheer enjoyment wherever educators and youth find themselves.

Share Your Eclipse Experience

Anyone who experienced the 2024 total solar eclipse will have something to say about it. We want to enable these stories to add to our existing knowledge and to be grounded in background information. We also want to showcase these observations to create a lasting impact for others to see. We will add any submitted Eclipse Nature Notes to our eclipse 2024 map.

Upcoming Events and Resources

• Eclipse Science through Data. Use this new data activity to engage your learners on solar eclipse occurrences over time. The activity encourages your students to notice patterns in eclipses over the course of thousands of years.
• Watch a recording of the Eclipse Q & A session we held on March 5, 2024.
• Watch a recording of our Eclipse Nature Notes training webinar.

You can find the path of totality and GMRI partners on our map.

Educator Information

As well as our curated resources for making models, projectors and more, we are recommending three projects to all educators for observing the solar eclipse with your learners. These encourage observation of different aspects of the eclipse and are great for a cloudy eclipse day and for observing anywhere in the country. They help users to create data on temperature change, cloud cover and wildlife sounds, and that data will have a lasting impact after the eclipse.

1. GLOBE Observer app. This citizen science project uses an app that will feature an Eclipse Data Observer feature. This will allow anyone to input temperature and cloud data for the few hours before and after the eclipse. The data will be used as part of the citizen science project. You will need an outdoor thermometer to record temperature data during the eclipse.
2. Eclipse Soundscapes. This project allows anyone to submit sound observations during the eclipse. The wildlife around you, and the weather, will be affected by the moon covering the sun. The Eclipse Soundscapes project team will use all the submitted sound data to investigate how the eclipse affects wildlife and other sounds.
3. Eclipse Nature Notes. Nature Note is a GMRI project that will include a writing and observation prompt that you can use to encourage anyone to write and submit their eclipse observations. These will be sent to other groups for peer review, and finally released on our digital map for anyone to explore. Sign up for Nature Note updates, including updates in webinar training sessions, here.
   
   1. Nature Notes Webinar Recording and Slides.

Learn from an eclipse expert!