{"id":14427,"date":"2017-08-11T22:26:06","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T14:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/space-station-crew-looks-forward-to-eclipse\/"},"modified":"2017-08-11T22:26:06","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T14:26:06","slug":"space-station-crew-looks-forward-to-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/space-station-crew-looks-forward-to-eclipse\/","title":{"rendered":"Space station crew looks forward to eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

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Astronaut Randy Bresnik aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The International Space Station\u2019s crew will enjoy views of the Aug. 21 solar eclipse during three successive orbits, giving the astronauts a unique opportunity to take in the celestial show from 250 miles up as the moon\u2019s shadow races across from the Pacific Ocean and the continental United States before moving out over the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re going around the Earth every 90 minutes, about the time it takes the sun to cross the U.S., we\u2019ll get to see it three times,\u201d Randy Bresnik said Friday during a NASA Facebook session. \u201cThe first time will be just off the West Coast, we\u2019ll actually cross the path of the sun, and we\u2019ll have (a partial) eclipse looking up from the space station.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the station crew, the first viewing opportunity will begin at 12:33 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) and end 13 minutes later.<\/p>\n

Floating in the European Columbus laboratory module, Bresnik showed off a solar filter shipped up to the station earlier, saying \u201cwe\u2019ve got specially equipped cameras that\u2019ll have these solar filters on them that allow us to take pictures of the sun. That\u2019s going to be pretty neat, we\u2019ll have a couple of us shooting that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One orbit later, the station will cross the path of the eclipse in the extreme northwest following a trajectory that will carry the lab over central Canada on the way to the North Atlantic. From the station\u2019s perspective, 44 percent of the sun will be blocked in a partial eclipse. But the crew will be able to see the umbra, where the eclipse is total, near the southern horizon.<\/p>\n

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The Aug. 21 solar eclipse will be visible across the continental United States, with the path of totality stretching in a narrow band from coast-to-coast. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be north of Lake Huron in Canada when we\u2019ll be able to see the umbra, or the shadow of the eclipse, actually on the Earth, right around the Tennessee-Kentucky (area), the western side of both those states,\u201d Bresnik said. \u201cThat\u2019ll be an opportunity for us to take video, and take still pictures and kind of show you from the human perspective what that\u2019s going to look like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The umbra, defining the 70-mile-wide shadow where the sun\u2019s disk will be completely blocked out, will be at its closest to the space station at 2:23 p.m. The moon\u2019s shadow will be about 1,100 miles away from the lab complex, but from their perch 250 miles up, the astronauts should be able to photograph the dark patch as they race along in their orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then the third pass is actually just off the East Coast,\u201d Bresnik said. \u201cWe\u2019ll come around one more time and from the station side we\u2019ll see about an 85 percent eclipse of the sun looking up (at 4:17 p.m.). So we should be able to get really neat photos, with our filters, of the sun being occluded by the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA plans to provide four hours of eclipse coverage, starting at noon EDT, on the agency\u2019s satellite television channel, in web streams and via social media, including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of options to share all this,\u201d Bresnik told a Facebook questioner. \u201cIt\u2019s U.S. taxpayer dollars. \u2026 You\u2019re paying us to take these pictures, and they go to you. They\u2019re free to everybody, and you can access them from the NASA website.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Astronaut Randy Bresnik aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA The International Space Station\u2019s crew will enjoy views of the Aug. 21 solar eclipse during three successive orbits, giving the astronauts a unique opportunity to take in the celestial show from 250 miles up as the moon\u2019s shadow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3193,1545,717,711,1418],"class_list":["post-14427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-expedition-52","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-randy-bresnik","tag-solar-eclipse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}