MTSU professor gives top 10 tips to view 2017 solar eclipse

Chuck Higgins, associate professor in Middle Tennessee State University's Physics and Astronomy Department, share his top 10 tips for viewing the solar eclipse:

1. Solar viewing glasses must be worn anytime when looking directly at the sun.

You have from about 12 noon to 1:28 p.m. to watch the slowly changing partial eclipse. You will have from 1:30 p.m. to 2:55 p.m. after totality to look at the partial phases of the sun.

2. If you are not looking directly at the sun, you don’t need these glasses.

3. During the partial phases, look at the shadows cast by the trees. The trees act like a pinhole camera, and you will see hundreds of crescent suns cast onto the ground.

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4. Put the solar eclipse glasses on the outside of your normal vision glasses. As soon as the last “blob” of light disappears on the edge of the sun, you can take your solar eclipse glasses off.

Once totality is over, you may notice the shadow of the moon rushing away from you in the sky.

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5. During totality, you can look directly at the sun without eclipse glasses for the approximately one minute of totality; it is safe.

6. Right before totality (without the glasses on), look away from the sun at the distant sky in the west. You may notice the shadow of the moon moving toward you in the sky.

"This is very cool to see. It will come from the northwest towards the southeast," Higgins noted.

7. During totality, look for planets and stars out in the sky. Venus is the brightest object to the right, and Jupiter is out to the left. Look at the halo of light around the sun (the corona). It is beautiful. Notice that the sun looks like a black hole in the sky. Amazing and so strange.

8. Also during totality, notice that the temperature cools off. Notice what the animals are doing. Birds will stop chirping and go silent as if at evening roost. You might hear people screaming with delight in the distance.

9. It is safe to take pictures with your cell phone during totality, but not before or after.

"You will ruin your cell phone camera if you try to take picture of sun directly with a cell phone," Higgins said.

He encouraged spectators not to fool with a cell phone, however, and simply enjoy the eclipse, "because you might miss the experience."

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10. If you're planning on using a 35 mm camera to photograph the eclipse, you must have a special solar filter made for the camera. Wearing a pair of solar viewing glasses and looking through the camera will result in eye damage. Putting a pair of solar viewing glasses over the camera lens will not work, either.

"You can burn a hole through a piece of paper with a magnifying glass. Now imagine that (phenomenon) with the camera. You are concentrating light," Higgins said. "All solar filters have to go on the outside (of the camera). The cameras, binoculars and even telescopes are going to have lenses that are going to focus the light."

Reach reporter Nancy De Gennaro at 615-278-5148 or degennaro@dnj.com.