>> What a great morning so far over the Pacific Ocean.
We're, we got to see the first bites out of the sun
from the moon, just an incredible view so far.
I really want to thank all the teams that are out there all
over the country helping us to get the science,
the most science we can get from here.
Really going to be an inspirational day,
and hopefully inspire the next generation of scientists,
engineers, like me, even, in the current generation.
Pretty inspirational, from that standpoint.
Volunteers everywhere, so we're excited about what's going
on and, you know, I've got to turn it
over to my buddy, Thomas, here.
He, this is his field of study, so Thomas,
what do you think, so far?
>> Oh, it's amazing.
We're already seeing it happening, right?
Why do you think this is important to NASA
and the United States?
>> Well, for us, it's a great opportunity, the totality
across the continent, and we're going
to learn as much as we can.
We study heliophysics and astrophysics in NASA,
and this is a great opportunity for us to learn even more,
and have every instrument we have out there available to us
to try to understand what we're going to see
for the first time in 99 years.
So, just very, very exciting to see what we can do here,
and the observations that we're going to get.
Can't wait to see the science come in,
and all the different science we're going to get from here so,
you know, everybody's going to learn something,
so you tell me what you think you're going to learn, Thomas,
having been studying this for your whole career.
>> Well look, my field of study is the sun,
and what's really unique about this time is the opportunity
to see the solar corona, the atmosphere
of the sun during the entire time
of the eclipse stitched together for one and a half hours.
And, the sun, of course, is important,
because it's the most important star.
Everything we learn about other stars, we learn here, first,
but it's also a source of space weather and radiation.
And actually, on board this aircraft,
we have two instruments, one from Los Alamos and one
from Space Environment Technologies
that make those very measurements
of how this radiation affects us.
>> Yeah, I think it's important, the more we know about the sun,
more we know space weather, we'll also,
it'll help us protect our own spacecraft in the future.
It'll also help us protect our astronauts
as we send crew further, and our home planet,
in terms of what's going on here.
So, why don't you tell me what you think we're going
to see today, and what we're going to learn today
through this just incredible event.
>> So, one of the most amazing parts of this is really
to see the star as a magnetic star,
and what I'm showing here is actually a prediction
of the space environment of the sun today
by predictive scientists and [inaudible] Applied Physics Lab.
And, it basically shows that these magnetic fields are there,
and what's really going to be great today is we're able
to test these models using observations from the ground
that we normally don't have,
and so this is really exciting for us.
>> Very good.
We've got over 11 spacecraft, and over 50 balloons going up.
We've got airborne science, like we're even doing here on the G3.
Can you explain what we expect to get
out of the spectrograph we're going
to have here on the plane, today?
>> So, a spectrograph is basically taking the light
of the sun, which is white, and spreads it into its colors,
and what we're going to see is during the time of now
and partial totality, we basically see,
during a partial eclipse, we see the radiation from the surface
of the sun, the photosphere, and all colors are there.
Well, when we're in total eclipse, what we're going
to see is the radiation from the atmosphere
that we normally really don't see that up close,
and that radiation actually has two predominant lines.
One is really hot iron, and the other one is, you know,
it's hot, because it's a million degrees,
because of that magnetic field.
The other one is helium, called helium
because of Helios, the sun in Greek.
So, it was actually discovered during eclipse just
like it today.
>> Very cool.
So, here we are, about 30 minutes away from totality,
but you can explain to me what you think,
from a spectrograph perspective.
You're going to look out the window,
what are you going to see there?
>> Well, so for me, the amazing part, really,
is that we're able to, of course, see our star
in its beauty, and I'm already kind of emotionally touched,
even now, but also, we're going to see how that eclipse,
that the lack of radiation, this perfect cloud
that the moon makes affects the earth, and its turbulence,
and I'm really going to see what,
are we going to feel it up here?
>> Alright.
Very cool.
Alright. Thanks, Thomas,
and thanks for sharing, everybody out there.
I tell you, about 30 minutes away.
We're going to measure as much as we can here,
and I'm about to fight this man for a window seat,
so when you get on an airplane and you look
for a window seat, get your glasses on.
We're going to look out here, and we're going to wrap up here
from the G3, and send it back to solar eclipse central.
See you guys soon.