Look, up in the sky!

In ancient times when there was an eclipse, people would bang on pots and pans to scare away what they thought was a dragon trying to eat the sun.

They would stop when the dragon went away, or the moon stopped blocking the view.

You could try that for about an hour this evening starting at 5:37 p.m. or you could go to the Abrams Planetarium and see the eclipse through a special telescope instead.

“I think it’s a pretty big deal we don’t get too many solar eclipses,” said John French, an astronomer with the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University. “The last one was in 2002 that was visible from here. I think there might have been another one since but it was clouded out.”

Where can we see it?

You’re going to need a high vantage point, French said. The sun will be low on the horizon, almost setting. He suggests rooftops if you can. The viewing at Abrams will be on top of a parking structure behind the planetarium, he said.

So how do you view it safely?

You never want to look at the sun dead on, French said.

“But it’s a misconception that eclipses make the sun more dangerous than normal,” he said. “You do have to be careful.”

He suggested using welding glasses with a strength of 14 or higher.

“We will have some telescopes set up that are designed to safely observe the sun,” he said.

You should be able to photograph the event safely with a cell phone or digital camera. If you have a camera with a viewfinder you might not want to look through it. It could magnify the sun’s damage to your eyes.

There’s more fun to be had tonight though.

“There’s a huge sunspot on the sun,” French said. “The sunspot is as huge as the planet Jupiter. We’ll be able to see that sunspot.”

What’s a sunspot?

“It’s a dark spot on the sun, caused by magnetic storms on the sun. The sun has magnetic storms that pop up now and again on the surface. It causes cooler areas on the sun and they show up as darker patches of the sun surface.”

Wait. The sun has a surface?

“Photosphere of the sun is the sun surface,” he said. “The surface is about 10,000 degrees in temperature. The center gets beyond one million degrees.”

What’s cool on the sun?

“The sunspots are cooler still, 6,000 or 7,000 degrees,” he explained.

What’s even cooler coming up?

“In 2017 in August there will be a total solar eclipse, not here in Michigan, but in a large part of the U.S. Go a few states south into the path of totality.”

The “Path of Totality?”

“We haven’t had a total eclipse for a big part of the U.S. in many years,” he said. “If you want to plan your summer vacation for 2017 get into the path of totality. Total is much more spectacular than the partial eclipse.”

The path of totality is a zone where the total solar eclipse will be visible. It’s about 100 miles wide and cuts a diagonal swath from Seattle to Myrtle Beach, he said.

Totally.