Join Sarah Peery, a doctoral candidate at Dartmouth College’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, for a discussion of the April 8 solar eclipse. This is a hybrid event.  Join us in person in the Mayer Room or online via Zoom. No registration required in person; register for Zoom here.

The Howe Library has a limited supply of eclipse glasses that will be available to all attendees of this program (up to two per family). After April 1, any remaining glasses will be available at the Information Desk in limited numbers to library cardholders only.

On April 8th, a large swath of any continental America will experience a total solar eclipse caused by the near-perfect alignment of our moon between Earth and the sun. We will discuss in greater detail the science of the Sun-Earth system and the orbital mechanics of how and why eclipses happen - as well as what we might expect to see during the eclipse itself, and some of the scientific discoveries facilitated by eclipses past and present.

Sarah Peery is a 5th year graduate student at Dartmouth College’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. She studies plasma physics with Dr. Yi-Hsin Liu. Plasma, the “fourth” state of matter, is the most common form of matter in the universe and can be found many places in nature, in space, and in laboratories on Earth. All stars are made of plasma! Sarah used large scale computer simulations to study a phenomena called Magnetic Reconnection, which is ubiquitous wherever plasma is found and is responsible for solar flares and other very energetic plasma behavior.