Are You Planning On Watching The Solar Eclipse Tomorrow? It Will Be Incredible But Make Sure To View Safely With Protective Eclipse Glasses

Are you going to be watching tomorrow's solar eclipse from Roosevelt Island?

Image From Vimeo 2017 Solar Eclipse With Joe Rao

The NY Times reports:

Tomorrow a total eclipse will crawl across the continental U.S. for the first time in nearly a century!

Starting around 1:15 p.m. E.D.T., a 70-mile-wide shadow cast by the moon will make landfall in Oregon and finish its path in South Carolina at around 2:49 p.m. E.D.T. Though only a lucky few will be in the direct path of totality — check here to see if you will be — the view from anywhere in North America will be incredible....

According to the American Museum Of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium:

... While New York is not in this “path of totality,” we will be able to see the Moon cover more than 70 percent of the Sun....

NYC Parks adds:

... Although a total solar eclipse is visible from some place on Earth about every 18 months, the last time the United States experienced a coat-to-coast total solar eclipse was 1918—99 years ago! After August 21, the next coast-to-coast total solar eclipse is due on August 12, 2045.

NYC hasn’t experienced a total eclipse since 1925. The next total eclipse in NYC will take place on May 1, 2079. We'll experience another partial eclipse on April 8, 2024.

So, if you’re planning on getting a good look at the Great American Eclipse, here are the details on when and where to view the solar eclipse in New York City:
When

Monday, August 21 at 2:44 p.m. – The best time to view the eclipse is between 1:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. (weather permitting). The actual event occurs at 2:44 p.m. The eclipse will last only three minutes, so be prepared!...

From The Twitterverse:

Hayden Associate @JoeRaoWeather interviewed me (and others) about tomorrow’s eclipse. [Video: 6 min]https://t.co/irvCyuiEEl pic.twitter.com/QKttjQVQdD

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 20, 2017

2017 Solar Eclipse with Joe Rao from Michael Kozel on Vimeo.

and take a look at these instructions describing how to to safely watch the partial solar eclipse in NYC- use eclipse glasses.



More in depth information on tomorrow's Solar Eclipse from the American Museum of Natural History.



If you're planning to watch the Eclipse tomorrow off Roosevelt Island, Curbed, DNA Info and NYC Parks have some suggestions.

UPDATE 8/21 - Waiting for the start of the eclipse at Roosevelt Island Pizzeria - with safety glasses on.

UPDATE 8:30 PM - Pictures from the Solar Eclipse.

Roosevelt Island FDR Four Freedoms Park Open Tonight To View Manhattanhenge Spectacular Light Show - Registration Required For FDR Parkhenge

According to the Roosevelt Island FDR 4 Freedoms Park:

On July 12, Four Freedoms Park Conservancy will open the gates of FDR Four Freedoms Park after-hours so that visitors can take advantage of “Manhattanhenge.” Twice a year, the sun sets perfectly in line with the New York City street grid, creating this spectacular light show.

(Photo: Katie Killary/Flickr)

Critically acclaimed Mitch Frohman Latin Jazz Quartet will play a free concert. Food, beer, and wine will be available for sale at the Katchkie Farm Food Station.

Bring your camera, grab a friend, and capture the NYC skyline as you’ve never seen it before.

WHEN:

Tuesday, July 12, 7pm – 9:30pm

This is a free event, but registration is required. For more information, visit our Manhattanhenge events page.

More on Manhattanhenge from Neil deGrasse Tyson:



Please share your Roosevelt Island Manhattanhenge pictures.

Awesome Manhattanhenge 2014 Seen From Roosevelt Island Manhattan Park Balcony Tonight

According to The Atlantic, Manhattanhenge is:

... the twice-a-year phenomenon when the sun sets exactly along the cross streets of New York City's prodigious grid....

From the Roosevelt Island Twitterverse:

I'll bet you could get an awesome Manhattanhenge with a long lens on a tripod from Roosevelt Island. Weather permitting...
— Hugh (@GammaInfinity) May 31, 2014

Hugh is right. Here's Manhattanhenge seen from a Roosevelt Island Manhattan Park balcony tonight

#manhattanhenge @everythingnyc #rooseveltisland beautiful view. http://t.co/x6NYgwpLRd
— Amanda Sadlier (@amandasadlier) May 31, 2014

More information on Manhattanhenge from Neil deGrasse Tyson of the American Museum Of Natural History



 and these previous posts.

UPDATE 10:40 PM - Diana Desrocher shares another awesome, though cloudy, Manhattanhenge view

 Image From Diane Desrocher

 from Manhattan Park tonight.

UPDATE 6/2 -Isis Barquero shares more Manhattanhenge photos seen from Roosevelt Island. These were taken June 1 from Southpoint Park.

Images From Isis Barquero

Beautiful Roosevelt Island East River Sunrise This Past Weekend Reason Why One Resident Lives Here - Manhattanhenge 2013 Coming May 28, Let's Get Some Roosevelt Island Pictures

Roosevelt Island resident Lynn Strong-Shinozaki shares this photo taken last Saturday night of a beautiful Roosevelt Island East River sunset looking north (Click on photo to enlarge)

Image From Lynn Strong-Shinozaki

and adds:

Why I Live Here.

(oops- there's a correction. The picture is of Sunrise, not Sunset).

There are many great Roosevelt Island photographers. Resident David Kraut suggested this idea for Roosevelt Island photographers.

"Manhattanhenge" is a reference to the twice-a-year phenomenon when the cross streets of Manhattan line up with the setting sun. Roosevelt Island is an ideal location to view this phenomenon because we can see across the west channel right up the streets.

In fact, I took this picture from the top of the helix by the garage, in 2009

Image From David Kraut

Neil DeGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium was the guy to name the thing. Here's the wiki:

Manhattanhenge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It might be interesting to see what kind of pictures Roosevelt Islanders can come up with. 

Manhattanghenge 2013 is coming May 28 at 8: 16 PM. According to Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

What will future civilizations think of Manhattan Island when they dig it up and find a carefully laid out network of streets and avenues? Surely the grid would be presumed to have astronomical significance, just as we have found for the pre-historic circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge, in the Salisbury Plain of England. For Stonehenge, the special day is the summer solstice, when the Sun rises in perfect alignment with several of the stones, signaling the change of season.

For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes twice a year. For 2013 they fall on May 28th, and July 13th, when the setting Sun aligns precisely with the Manhattan street grid, creating a radiant glow of light across Manhattan's brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough's grid. A rare and beautiful sight. These two days happen to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball's All Star break. Future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball....

Let's get some good pictures Manhattanhenge pictures from Roosevelt Island!!!!

Science Education Faltering in United States But Roosevelt Island Parents And Kids Making Extra Efforts To Learn Robotics & Computer Coding With Some Pizza Too - Will Spaceflight Be Next?

You Tube Video of Neil de Grasse Tyson On Science Education

A grim report from this October 26, 2010 New York Times editorial:

... the United States ranks 27th out of 29 wealthy countries in the proportion of college students with degrees in science or engineering, while the World Economic Forum ranked this country 48th out of 133 developed and developing nations in quality of math and science instruction....

On Roosevelt Island several concerned parents are trying to interest Roosevelt Island kids in the amazing world of science and technology every Thursday and Friday evening at the Roosevelt Island Youth Program.

 

 Image Of Frank Farance Teaching At Roosevelt Island Youth Program Robotics Class

A Roosevelt Island parent tells us about this great learning experience for kids:

Imagine a 6 year old child at the blackboard explaining how a robot sees colors, explaining it in terms of binary numbers and the logic structure to navigate. That’s the case, no joke.

The Roosevelt Island Kids Robotics Group has been meeting for several months with kids 6-12 years old. The children are of various backgrounds and maturities, and yet they treat each other as equals and teammates, each with a valuable contribution. With a 10 minute pizza break for the tummies, the two hour odyssey understanding the robot mind is then capped with each child’s one minute summary of the night. Often the insights are a short attempt to pass the ball to the next person, but periodically there’s a revelation, a true gem. By night’s end, the heads are weary and the imaginations have rebuilt computer code, and robot arms and legs, reviewed and discussed logic and all the minds have collected empirical data from running the robot. The bedroom ceilings will be covered in robots now..

“Did the robot change its stance?” “ Is it going to repeat the performance exactly the same?” “Does the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena really use Lego Robots like us?” are coursing the agile minds as they head to bed. Inspiring these thoughts is Yale-trained engineering expert Frank Farance, heretofore known as the RIRA President and weekly columnist for that much-awaited Main Street Wire column. Somehow after years of teaching robotics, Frank, aided by agile photographer and hobbyist Brian Dorfmann, has joined fledgling fun with fascinating fact, roboteers with reason, aspirants with algorithms.

Image Of Roosevelt Island Kids Learning About Science

Mssrs. Farance and Dorfmann’s ’s often hilarious antics and old yarns are a most effective way to the child imagination. They keep them laughing with a dash of humor here, a reminder of the Star Wars movie there, and Sponge Bob trivia only the most die-hard inside-baseball cartoon lover would remember. Frank is making the most arcane aspects of computer science into a pumpkin patch of science. By comparison, the classes our kids endure by day seem restrictive and elegiac march of facts and quizzes. “Can learning really be fun?”must cross their minds. But, alas the adults seem to have captured the little minds’ attention and kept them trained on learning robots for two hours. Two hours of eating candy might seem proportionally correct, but deux heures on robots?!? Yale must have had some psychology classes as well….

Maybe some time in the not so distant future the Roosevelt Island Science kids can try their hands and brains on building a spacecraft like this Brooklyn boy did with his dad.

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Wouldn't that be something?

Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Birthday Message to Roosevelt Island and the Rest of the World

I am a big fan of science fiction and Arthur C. Clarke together with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein are my favorite authors of this genre. Via Space Ref,

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, a science-fiction author, inventor, and futurist, simply a greate mind celebrates his 90th birth anniversary on 16th of December, 2007.

Sir Arthur was the first person to propose using geostationary satellites for instant global communications.

An ``artificial satellite'' at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e., it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly half the earth's surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, could give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet."

He is the author of many books including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, Rendezvous With Rama and my favorite Clarke book, Fountains of Paradise that describes the construction of a space elevator.

Sir Arthur developed the 3 Laws of Prediction:

1- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Happy 90 orbits around the sun Sir Arthur. Transcript and video of Arthur C. Clarke's 90th birthday remarks are here. UPDATE 12/16/07: For those interested in space and astronomy, today's Washington Post has a fantastic profile of Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium.

"I grew up in the Bronx, and I'd never been in total darkness before," he says. "The closest you'll get is a movie theater, but even in a movie theater there's a glow from the doors. So I had a kind of urban view of the universe, and when I was at the planetarium and the stars came up, I remember thinking, 'Nice show, but this is not the real universe. I've seen the real universe, and it has 12 stars in it.' " Once Tyson learned otherwise, he was smitten. He'd talk about the universe, read about the universe and, whenever possible, stare at the universe through a telescope he'd lug to the roof of the apartment building where his family lived. Whenever anyone asked what he'd do when he grew up, he had an answer, one that he had trouble pronouncing at the time: "I'm going to be an astrophysicist." Which is what he became, though his PhD in the subject is but one line of a résumé so packed with titles and achievements that it is tiring to read. Tyson is the author of eight books on all things intergalactic, most recently "Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries," a bestseller that was just released in paperback. He is also the host of "Nova ScienceNow," a "60 Minutes"-style show on PBS, as well as a lecturer, researcher and a TV pundit whenever the heavens make news.

I don't think Arthur C. Clarke would mind sharing his birthday message with Neil deGrasse Tyson.