The 4.8 magnitude earthquake that rumbled through the Tri-State area Friday morning has come and gone, so the solar eclipse that is set to happen around 3pm on Monday is still the natural phenomenon that has our attention. What does the eclipse mean, and why is it so significant? Retired astronomy professor Harold Kozak appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning to explain why New Yorkers will want to safely observe the eclipse if they have the opportunity.
“This is something that doesn’t happen every day,” Kozak told Berman and Riedel. “Matter of fact, the next time we’ll get a chance to see a solar eclipse like this will be 2044. What’s going to happen on Monday in the afternoon is that the moon is going to be in line exactly with the sun- that’s why we call it a solar eclipse- and it’s going to gradually move across the area of the sun, blocking it out little, little, little at a time until it’s completely blocked out, and then it will unblock again.”
Kozak had this advice for anybody who picked up a pair of eclipse sunglasses for the occasion. “Please make sure that you look at the glass. Make sure that there is no crack, there’s no split. The lens has to be perfectly flat and smooth, with no breaks in it at all. And then, what you do when you put the eclipse glasses on, look down first, then look up. Always important to look down, then look up [otherwise] the radiation can actually go through the pupil of your eye and damage your retina. And there have been cases in the past when people have not been careful and have looked at a solar eclipse not protecting their eyes and have gotten total blindness.”
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