When Nature Puts On The Really Big Show – Total Eclipse on the Prairie

Total eclipse of the sun this afternoon in Kearney, Nebraska.

The total eclipse of the sun in Kearney, Nebraska this afternoon was absolutely stunning.

You could see hundreds of copies of the eclipse courtesy of the pinholes in the tree leaves on campus.

You didn’t need any fancy equipment to see the images. Just look down and see the pinhole images provided by the trees.

Panoramic photo of crowd for the eclipse today on the University of Nebraska at Kearney campus.

Lots of high school and college students showed up, as did people from the community.

Lots of work by volunteers and catering staff to get that many people fed!

The university had plenty of people to give tours on campus, so I spent my non-watching time working on getting hot dogs into buns and wrapped in foil, ready to serve.

Twenty minutes and 17 seconds to totality.

What a great day for our community and university.  We had thousands of guests on campus today.  Making the Great American Eclipse Watch Party work properly on campus took a huge effort by staff, faculty and volunteers.  Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen.Hope everyone else had as much fun as I did.

And one final note….

There’s been lots of talk lately about what makes science be science.  That discussion goes way beyond the competency of this blog, but I would note that one big thing science can do is make predictions of what will happen.  And we can judge the quality of the science by the accuracy of the prediction.  Here’s a tweet from historian Michael Beschloss highlighting an article from the New York Times in 1932 that mentioned today’s eclipse: