Understanding the Upcoming Eclipse with MLive's Emily Bingham

Hey friends, today on the podcast, we have an eclipse coming up, and so I brought in our expert Emily Bingham to talk about where you need to be in Michigan, or if it should be Michigan at all, plus what do you need to have to make sure that you can safely watch this eclipse. And as I said, our guest today and my dear friend Emily Bingham is here to talk eclipse first. Emily, how are you? I'm doing great, Eric. How are you today? I am wonderful.

It's great to see you. And obviously, we're sort of hitting that fever pitch as we head to April 8th. And so I thought I would bring you on to talk us through as Michiganders, how we should think about this thing. What should we do? What do we need? All those sorts of things. So first, let's start with the part that you and I like to jam about a lot, which is why is this one so magical?

Like what makes this one so cool? Yeah, there's actually several reasons why this particular eclipse is so special and why I'm encouraging everybody, if they can, to try to go see it or spend some time outside experiencing it. First of all, it is the last significant total solar eclipse to cross over a huge swath of the United States. The next one across this much of the U.S. Won't return until I think it's 20 years from now, about two decades.

So you're going to want to get out and see it. But it also happens to be happening at the same time as the sun is reaching what's called solar maximum, which is the peak of a predictable 11-year cycle, during which time the sun's poles actually switch places. This causes the sun to become wildly active. It's the reason we're seeing so many northern lights now. And according to Nass, when the sun is completely eclipsed by the moon...

Because of it being at this solar maximum, we're going to be able to see these cool streamers and outbursts coming off of the sun's corona. So it's going to be really special and it's all just due to really incredible timing. Right. As most magical things in nature tend to be, right?

Okay. So if I want to get out, you know, it is going southwest to northeast, but it's not really really going over a lot of Michigan. Where should I be to see? Because I think you can in Michigan see it at 100%, yes? Or at least super close. I know Detroit is 99%. So whereabouts can you get a better shot as the closer you get to Toledo and Cleveland? Yeah, that's the key. The closer you get to Toledo, the more of totality you will see.

And according to the NASA maps, which you can zoom in on, but you can only zoom in on so far, It is the southeasternmost corner. It's a teeny tiny wedge, basically along I-75 as you're coming out of Toledo, crossing the Michigan-Ohio border. To my eye, it looks like it might be Erie Township, but it's going to be a very small, small, small area. There are some caveats about that. I have spoken with several experts who say eclipse traffic is unbelievable.

And so if everybody is trying to jam into this one little tiny corner of Michigan, you might not get out of it for quite some time after the eclipse.

So I actually don't encourage people to try to see the total solar eclipse in the one small spot of Michigan where you can see it. I have some other tips about that, but... For your question, that is the place in Michigan where you will be able to see the sun completely covered by the moon. Well, now you have me intrigued. What are your other tips about this? So a lot of this eclipse, the answer is it depends. It depends on what you want to see.

The people that I have spoken with that have experienced total solar eclipses say, while a partial solar eclipse, which is what the rest of Michigan will get to see, 99 and downward, is an amazing sight, it is still nothing in comparison to a complete eclipse so my advice for anybody who wants to see a total solar eclipse is first to if you have the ability to kind of go at the last minute watch the weather because

i know a lot of people who have booked airbnbs in neighboring states but unfortunately april 8th statistically is a very cloudy day in a lot of the midwest so i don't want to encourage people to book a hotel room somewhere and be stuck you know I'm not able to see it. So what my husband and I are doing is we are going to camp and we are going to watch the weather and the days ahead of time.

We're going to see where's the closest place that it's sunny in the path of totality and what's where we're going to go. So that's my first piece of advice for totality. Or if you have the money and the time, book an Airbnb or a hotel room somewhere that is statistically very sunny, like the American Southwest. As an alternative, 99% and onward is still pretty cool to witness.

Anybody who saw the 2017 solar eclipse in Michigan, such as myself, can attest that, go to see if your local library or planetarium is having a watch party. It's really cool to join other people to experience this, you know, sometimes once in a lifetime event. So there's still plenty of cool ways to experience it. But if you want to see totality, kind of make a couple different game plans now.

Well, it just leads me to the other question. And, you know, since there's years in between the times that we get eclipses, clips, I clips is how long typically does this this last? How long is this event? Well, the total eclipse can go on for quite a while. As the moon starts to blot out the sun, it's a partial eclipse all the way up until the total eclipse. The total eclipse itself is just a few minutes.

So I think the range is three and a half to four minutes, depending on where you're viewing it. The longest place I saw was maybe in Texas, was a little bit over four minutes long. So it's not that long. But I mean, all told, because of how profound an experience it is, the sky will darken as if it's dusk or dawn. Birds will stop singing. Some people say that the air temperature cools.

And the people I know who've seen one say there's absolutely nothing like it and that it's almost indescribable. So I would venture to guess that even though it's brief, it might feel longer because of the inherent magic in it. I'm transfixed. I'm trying to put my brain together.

I don't remember if it's on NASA's site or Axios. One of them did a story about Michigan and the eclipse and was saying that seeing it in Detroit at 99.1% is like thinking a steak from Walmart is the same as Ruth Chris. And I'm like, how, how is that? How, like what, what is in that 0.6% that is just so magical that Detroit is like the Walmart of steak joints, right? Like that's hilarious. So. I had no idea that I didn't know about that difference.

And in 2017, the last total eclipse to cross North America, I watched it with a pinhole camera in my backyard. And I was like, that's cool. And then I talked to a friend of mine who watched it on the West Coast. And he's not a man of faith whatsoever. And he said, Emily, it was like standing in the presence of God.

And that is like even just saying that now i get a chill every time i think about we described it and so i have for like a year and a half now i've had that day marked on my calendar not working.

Yeah you know out of my desk at least yeah i'm excited about it for people who are preparing to do this and i have a feeling as here in michigan it's an interesting timing because it'll be a lot of people will be coming out of spring break and and all of the sudden remember remember, oh, it's an eclipse today, right? So what do they need to make sure that they have so that they can view it?

I know that there's a couple of ways that you can do that, but what are some of the ways that you can make sure that you safely don't burn your retinas out? Super important. Everyone I've spoken to about the eclipse, that's the number one thing that they want to talk about. Public awareness, never, ever, ever. We'll look at the sun period, but certainly not during the eclipse. Even when the sun is blotted out by the moon, you can still damage your eyes.

So act now. If you would like eclipse glasses, either order them from a reputable site online. I've been told not to go through big sites like Amazon because they might not be certified and might not actually be safe. So you can just Google ISO certified eclipse glasses and you should find them. NASA has a list of places where you can order them. There's still a couple of weeks, so you should be able to get some in time.

Alternatively, I've heard of libraries giving out and planetariums giving out eclipse glasses for free. You can also make your own pinhole camera there. If you Google pinhole camera for an eclipse, lots of instructions online. I've seen people use something as simple as a colander where they hold a colander and let the sun's light shine through the colander. And you can see the partial eclipse moving along in the little circles of light that shine on the ground.

Yeah. You can even, I remember as a child, there being a solar eclipse, a partial solar eclipse when I was in grade school, and you just watch the shadow of the moon. So there's lots of really creative ways to experience it. Again, this is why I recommend, if possible, going with a group that's at a planetarium so that you can have experts showing you all these different ways to experience this thing.

I would imagine that many planetariums will also have telescopes that have the special lens coverings on them so that you can view it even closer. This is the point where I also want to mention, if you're going to attempt to photograph the eclipse, your camera also will need a special lens covering, whether whether it's your cell phone or a nice camera, because again, you can really hurt your eyes otherwise. Emily, if people want to follow along, because I assume when you go view this,

you're going to do some sort of reporting on what you see. Yes, I would imagine. Well, I mean, it needs to be figured out. I feel like eclipse chasing is a pretty good story to kind of start off with. So where can people find those stories that you're going to be putting out? I will be, I mean, in my usual place on MLive, I'm taking a sabbatical from the social media right now. So I would just encourage people to, you can Google my name, Emily Bingham, and I have an author page on MLive.com.

And that has my updated list of stories that go up every single day. Well, enjoy your continued sabbatical of social and enjoy your eclipse chasing. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.