What is a total solar eclipse?
Every year, there are a minimum of four eclipses: two solar and two lunar. However, the eclipse on August 21 is especially unique; there hasn’t been one like it since 1918. During this eclipse, the sun will be covered—totally or partially—for approximately three hours, with the longest period of complete coverage lasting just under three minutes. At this time, the only visible portion of the sun will be its hazy atmosphere known as the corona.

Why is this such a big deal?
Scientists have been studying data and patterns from the eclipses for the past 60 years to learn more about the sun. The Applied Physics Lab (APL) at Johns Hopkins University will send the Parker Solar Probe to the sun’s corona in 2018 in hopes of answering questions that have plagued scientists for decades. “It’s the first time in 99 years that we’ve had a total solar eclipse that’s gone right from one coast all the way across the U.S. to the other coast,” said Dr. Nicola Fox, project scientist at APL. “The corona is about two million degrees, but the surface is only 10,000 degrees, that doesn’t make sense. From a logical standpoint, the further away from the surface, it should get cooler, not hotter.” Events like the total solar eclipse bring scientists one step closer to answering these questions. 

Will we be able to see it in Baltimore?
Each state along the 70-mile wide path of the eclipse—Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and The Carolinas—will witness a total solar eclipse, in which the moon will completely cover the sun, while the rest of the country will see varying views of partial eclipses. “In Baltimore, it will be a partial eclipse for about two hours,” said street astronomer Herman Heyn. “One hour as the moon approaches the sun, and another hour as it leaves the sun.” According to an interactive map created by NASA, a partial eclipse will begin in Baltimore at approximately 1:18 p.m., with maximum visibility occurring at 2:42 p.m., and ending at 4:01 p.m. “You’ll see something, it won’t be 100-percent totality, but it will darken up a bit, and part of the sun will disappear,” Fox said. “It’s really dependent on the cloud coverage. As long as you’re somewhere pretty open, with a good view of the sun, you should be fine.”

Can I take pictures of it?
Heyn explained that a total solar eclipse is actually safe for unprotected viewing, but looking directly at a partial eclipse is harmful for the eyes. There are creative alternatives to view the eclipse that will occur over Baltimore. Purchasing “eclipse glasses” is one way to protect your eyes from the suns harmful rays. These glasses are specially designed to look directly at the sun. “You don’t want to use regular dark sunglasses,” Heyn cautioned. “Those don’t block enough of the infrared light that would burn your eyes.” Creating a pinhole camera is another safe way to experience the eclipse, using materials already available around the house. “Take a piece of cardboard, about a foot square, and poke a hole in it with a straight pin,” Heyn explained. “Take another piece about half that size and place it under the first. That will give you a small image of the eclipsed sun.” There will also be workshops at Cylburn Arboretum the day of the eclipse to create pinhole cameras for ages seven and up. Taking pictures of the eclipse should be done cautiously, due to the extreme heat—two million degrees Fahrenheit—emitted from the sun’s corona. A typical photo lens will burn up without a heavy-duty filter.

What does this mean for the future of astronomy?
The total solar eclipse later this month will be another piece of data that the APL and NASA can use toward their mission. “It’s kind of cool because we’ve discovered so much about the sun’s corona itself during eclipses,” she said. “The huge temperature difference was found during an eclipse and what the corona’s structure looks like was found during an eclipse. Without the solar probe, we’ll never fully understand what we are really seeing.”

Star Struck

St. Paul Street
July 9, 2016

“Now don’t accuse me of putting in a slide,” Herman Heyn cracks, adjusting his telescope and tripod in front of the Chipotle in Charles Village as a middle-school girl peers in.

“Oh wow!” she squeals, which, after the half-million “looks” Heyn figures he’s offered over the past three decades, still makes the 85-year-old, street-corner astronomy busker smile. “The rings are so bright!”

The “rings”—billions of ice, dust, and rock particles circling Saturn—are so geometrically exquisite at 800 million miles away that it’s hard to believe one’s eyes. “I’ve been doing this 29 years. Same number it takes Saturn [hurtling at 21,000 miles per hour] to go once around the sun,” Heyn laughs. “And I’ve been accused of all kinds of tricks.”

A few minutes later, a retired Indian-born biologist who lives nearby takes a peek. “They’re perfect,” he gasps.

Tonight, Mars is “near” Saturn. Jupiter, meanwhile, sits to the right of the moon, which is half-lit in its current phase, with craters resembling a pockmarked sidewalk. Later, two 20-something researchers from the Johns Hopkins-based Space Telescope Science Institute—home to the Hubble—walk by. “Scientists we work with stare at data being downloaded on their computer all day long,” Joseph Long says. “They couldn’t even tell you when the planet they’re studying is visible.”

“Herman introduces the beauty and scale, which is visceral, to people. You feel it in your gut,” adds Brendan Hagan, who with Long has followed in Heyn’s footsteps, bringing “pop-up” telescope events to the Inner Harbor and downtown.

“Years ago, a woman stopped by and told me she’d just submitted her master’s thesis on Venus. And then admitted she’d never seen Venus directly,” Heyn recalls. “I said, ‘Would you like to?’”

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Death in Diorama

Cathedral Street
July 13, 2016

Frances Glessner Lee, considered the mother of forensic science, often wore all black and was nicknamed “the Tarantula” by her family.

“I would’ve loved to have met her,” Bruce Goldfarb, spokesman for Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, deadpans to the sold out crowd at a presentation about Lee’s famous miniature dioramas known as “the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.”

Goldfarb, in fact, is enthralled with Lee’s story and legacy, which he’s sharing tonight at The Maryland State Medical Society. Bright and born to a wealthy family, Lee was nonetheless discouraged from attending college. Instead, she became the first woman invited to join the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1943. Through a brother’s friend, she’d become intensely interested in early forensic science and eventually began the painstaking process of building intricate, true-to-life, dollhouse-size crime scenes where “unexplained” deaths—accidents, suicides, and murders—had taken place.

The purpose of the models—authentic down to hand-rolled cigarette butts that are half the size of a fingernail and filled with tobacco—is to teach detectives how to observe, record, and evaluate crime scenes. The whodunit answers are kept secret to protect the learning process.

The 18 studies, along with witness statements, were given to the Baltimore office in 1966 after Lee’s death. They continue to serve as a component of an acclaimed law enforcement seminar, but from time to time, visitors come by for a look as well.

“The other day two women stopped me and wanted to know the answer to one scene,” Goldfarb says. “I explained I wasn’t allowed to say and that it wasn’t really the point.

“As soon as I finished,” Goldfarb continues, “one woman turns to the other and says, ‘I think the husband did it.’”

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Laugh Out Loud

North Charles Street
July 16, 2016

“Whenever I go do shows in D.C. or in the county and I tell people I live in Baltimore City, everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, you must be so brave!’

“And, I’m like, ‘Yo, look at me, I’m wearing skinny pants and black, thick-framed glasses,” 27-year-old Umar Khan tells the LOL@Artscape crowd as it breaks into laughter at the second of the annual festival’s two nights of live comedy. “I live in a neighborhood with cupcake shops. I’m safe.”

A city schools’ psychologist by day, and proud resident of gentrifying Hampden—which he notes by taking a gentle swipe at his neighborhood’s charcuterie trend—the self-deprecating Khan is serving as host of Artscape’s comedy shows for the first time this year. “It was a really diverse crowd—young, old, black, white—which actually makes for a lot better show for a comedian,” Khan says afterward. “Telling jokes about white hipsters to white hipsters isn’t funny. There’s no tension.”

Several performances fall flat—the over-sharing 20-something female comic who’s more uncomfortably awkward than funny, and an orange-jump-suited ukulele singer-songwriter who sounds like country star Trace Adkins, for example. But most of the comics effectively play off their personas and the audience, cracking jokes about loved ones, race, drugs, and Baltimore—sometimes all at once.

Mike Smith, an animated, mid-30s newcomer to comedy, talks about urban life and family—in particular, a close relative who’s recently turned her life around.

“She used to be a crackhead and now she’s a vegan,” the basketball-jersey clad Smith says, rolling his eyes. “Now, she’s a real pain in the ass.”