Astronomy reduced to pixel archive science

A University of Oregon professor of physics frets that astronomy is drowning in data that threatens to reduce it to a “pixel archive science.” His solution is something right out of Star Trek.

Dr. Gregory Bothun made a presentation titled, “Big Data, Discovery, and a New Kind of Astronomy: Are We Prepared?” at the February meeting of the Rose City Astronomers at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland. Bothun noted that efforts such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey provide the stuff of discovery.

Prof. Gregory Bothun of the University of
Oregon spoke about astronomy’s challenges
with big data to a meeting Feb. 15
of the Rose City Astronomers in Portland.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“The great thing about surveys is that they produce a catalog of calibrated sources which serve the community on a worldwide basis and involve more people in astronomy,” he said, adding that, for this reason, surveys should come before more targeted observations of individual objects.

“We’ve done it the other way around, mostly because of some kind of fetish with large-aperture glass,” Bothun said. “We have spent far more money building large telescopes than we have on building real, useful surveys that serve the community.”

Bothun pointed out that sometimes a big telescope will do a survey, such as Hubble’s ultra-deep-field work, and this leads to tremendous advances.

“Every time an instrument does a calibrated survey, science moves forward much more rapidly than some individual working with some piece of aperture doing a follow-up observation,” Bothun said.

A pipeline problem

While Sloan was useful, Bothun said, it also illuminated a problem. It took eight years to get the survey’s 20 terabytes of data into the hands of scientists.

“We’re not good at pipeline processing of survey data in a timely manner to feed a community,” Bothun said. “We shouldn’t have to wait eight years to go from acquired pixels to reduced data to analysis. It should just happen instantly. To the extent that it doesn’t is the extent that we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot and turn astronomy into a science that archives pixels.”

The problem is about to get more challenging. A coalition of institutions is building the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) in Chile. The LSST camera will have 3.2 billion pixels, and at 16 bits per pixel, each image it captures will be a whopping 6.4 gigabytes.

“Try to take a selfie of that and send it to your mom over wifi,” Bothun quipped. The challenge, though, is no laughing matter. It’s difficult to move that much data around, and it’s hard to look at it, too.

What you see is not all you get

“Every pixel in astronomy has a source in it. We need to see every pixel. We’re nowhere close to that,” Bothun said. A short-term answer may be visualization walls, commonly called viz walls. These are banks of high-definition monitors that scientists could use to display and manipulate vast amounts of data in one place. This would be perfect for looking at such large, high-resolution images. If you’re seeing a scaled-down version of a photo, Bothun said, the really interesting stuff may simply get averaged out. In addition, it’s better to look at a entire image at native resolution. This will take some training of our brains, but they’re capable.

“Your brain is a great visualizing machine. It’s a great parallel processing machine,” Bothun said. He said if it wasn’t we couldn’t drive on I-5. Think about how it would be if you tried to consciously track the speed and location of every other vehicle around you on the freeway. It’s not possible.
“Your brain does this automatically,” Bothun said. “It’s about time we we started to do data analysis in a forum that matches your brain’s algorithm.”

This would allow us “to take on extremely challenging problems, which is what leads to discovery in science,” he added.

Star Trek to the rescue

Viz walls may not be enough when it comes to the data from LSST. Its ten-year survey of the universe will generate a mind-boggling 60 petabytes of information. To meet the challenge, Bothun’s office is working on advanced visualization tools, a sort of three-dimensional viz cloud.

“It could be the holodeck,” Bothun said in reference to the virtual reality facility in Star Trek. “That’s how you should think of this.”

In this viz cloud trained humans could look at data in real time, and quickly sort out and discard what isn’t useful. After all, Bothun noted, the scientifically interesting data is usually just a tiny fraction of what is collected, and there’s no good reason to be pack rats with the rest.

“If all we’re going to do is take the raw data set and write it to disk, this is not a useful instrument,” he said of the LSST. “We have to do business differently if we want to optimize discovery.”

Big data is here, and visualization of this sort will help astronomers, but it will go beyond that; It can help in fields from finance and business to medicine, climate change, and counter-terrorism. To make effective use of the information available will require solutions to the pipeline and database challenges.

“All of this is absolutely vital for observational astronomy to continue to progress and continue to engage in discovery,” Bothun concluded.

Taproot tells the story of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt

Henrietta Leavitt blew up the universe. It’s amazing that so few people know about her. The numbers of the informed grow with each performance of Silent Sky, a play by San Francisco-based playwright Lauren Gunderson running through this weekend at Taproot Theatre in Greenwood.

Leavitt is the early 20th century Harvard Observatory astronomer who, while examining and cataloging photographic plates of stars, discovered the relationship between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars. This breakthrough enabled astronomers to calculate the distances to these stars, some of which turned out to be at vast distances from Earth. What were then called spiral nebulae were actually other galaxies and not part of our own Milky Way. The universe suddenly became a far, far bigger place.

The play, directed by Karen Lund at Taproot, explores Leavitt’s life as she moves away from home to work at Harvard, examines the struggles she and her colleagues faced as women in astronomy, and delves into the ways in which art and faith influenced her life and work. There’s also a sad tale of love.

Hana Lass as Henrietta Leavitt in Taproot Theatre’s Silent
Sky, running through Feb. 27. Taproot photo.

The show features five actors, and all did a marvelous job. Hana Lass played Henrietta. Kim Morris played Willamina Fleming, who was actually the housekeeper for Harvard Observatory director Edward Pickering until he hired her, at a pittance of a wage, as a human computer to measure and catalog the brightness of stars on the observatory’s photographic plates. Nikki Visel played Annie Cannon, another computer who developed the stellar classification system still in use today. Candace Vance played Margaret Leavitt, Henrietta’s sister. Calder Jameson Shilling portrayed Peter Shaw, an assistant to Pickering and a faculty member at Harvard.

Toiling in obscurity

Even many people close to astronomy did not know of Leavitt.

Director Karen Lund and Adrian Wyard of the Counterbalance
Foundation drew a large and engaged crowd to Taproot Theatre
on a recent Tuesday for a discussion about Silent Sky and
the interplay between science and faith. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“I am a historian of science and had never heard of any of these people,” said Adrian Wyard, director of the Counterbalance Foundation, a Seattle-based nonprofit educational organization working to promote the public understanding of science and how the sciences relate to wider society. We did a story about our interview with Wyard earlier this month, in which we discussed the interplay between art, science, and faith. Taproot held a conversation at the theater last week for discussion of similar topics as they relate to Silent Sky. Wyard gave the play a nod of approval, noting that it was highly entertaining and that the science was right on.

“It’s so rare to see great art where the science is represented faithfully,” he said. “Henrietta Leavitt played a major role in an important discovery in the 1900s. It’s fair to say that she blew up the universe.”

Telling the story of Silent Sky

Lund, the director, said that the actors did extensive research about the people they were to portray, and turned up some facts that were not depicted in the play. For example, both Henrietta Leavitt and Cannon were hearing impaired, but only Leavitt was depicted as such for Silent Sky. Lund pointed out that the playwright Gunderson really captured the personalities and the times.

“It’s beautiful, in a composite way, how accurate she is,” Lund said, adding that their own research helped a great deal. “We use the information that we gather as a way of supporting the characters that we build and create.”

The set pieces of the work stations the computers used are faithful reproductions of the gear the women used at Harvard more than a century ago. Lund also brought in an astronomer from the University of Washington to talk the cast through the science of the play, which Lund said was a rewarding day of rehearsal.

“We wanted to be able to speak with authority as those characters,” she said.

Science, faith, and art

Faith came into the story because Leavitt was the daughter of a Congregational minister, and art entered because Henrietta was inspired to recognize the patterns of the Cepheids in part because there were similar tonal relationships in her sister’s piano playing. Art informed and nurtured the scientific mind.

Wyard pointed out that there are some pretty bright lines around what science is supposed to do.
“The job is to understand the natural world that we can measure, and to establish mathematical theories which could be falsifiable,” he said, adding that science must tackle some pretty narrow questions. “Purpose and meaning and value are things we need to eject from science if science is going to do a good job.”

Silent Sky is excellent theater, and one need not be interested in astronomy to enjoy the story. The performances and the staging are grand. Sadly, this is its last weekend, with the final performance on Saturday. We also enjoyed another Gunderson play about women in science, Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight, which was produced at ArtsWest in West Seattle in 2011. Emilie was a major force in early 18th century math and physics.

Check out Silent Sky if you can.

Luna Girls on Alki

The Luna Girls on Alki sculpture can be
found along the Alki Trail just a short distance
south of Seacrest Park. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Luna Girls on Alki is an astronomically named sculpture just south of Seacrest Park along the Alki Trail in West Seattle. The Luna Girls, nine-foot-tall bathing beauties cut from slab steel, were created by local artist Lezlie Jane, who also had a hand in Constellation Park and the Avenue of Stars that we featured in a post back in December. The Luna Park amusement park at Duwamish Head was open from 1907 until 1913, though the attached swimming pools operated until 1931. The Luna Girls in their twenties beach attire continue to welcome visitors to the neighborhood.

If you'd like your own Luna Girl, or the entire trio, 20-inch-tall replicas can be purchased at Alki Arts gallery.

Mixing science, art, and religion with Adrian Wyard

These days many folks would have the sciences go it alone. Education advocates repeat their mantra of STEM, STEM, STEMMMM while schooling in the arts is reduced or eliminated. Some scientists decry the so-called magic of religion. People of faith shun science because God is the answer. Adrian Wyard—software engineer, artist, astronomy buff, and Christian—believes science, art, and faith get along just fine.

Adrian Wyard

“As a child I always had those three elements in my life,” Wyard said in an interview earlier this month. “I grew up going to church back in England, I had a strong science and engineering interest, which sent me on a straight line into computer science, computer software design. That was my first career.”

Wyard fesses up to a certain level of single mindedness about computers in his youth.

“I had very little time for anything else,” he said, though he had some interest in art in high school, and that crept into his work.

“There was always a design element,” he said. “I was never that good at coding but I loved the big picture, I loved solving problems for real people, so I ended up focusing on designing user interfaces.”

He was the program manager for Word 1.0 at Microsoft.

“I was lucky enough to be there when all the good stuff happened at the beginning,” Wyard said. “That took a lot of my time,” he added in something of an understatement.

Changing course

After leaving Microsoft Wyard decided to reboot and attended Seattle Pacific University.

“I went to SPU to essentially do exactly the opposite of what I did the first time. So I took liberal arts, I took theater, I took English, I took sociology,” he said. “I just got totally enamored by these connections between different disciplines.”

Wyard wanted to learn more about those connections. The research was out there, but it was hard to find. He started the Counterbalance Foundation in 1998 as essentially an online library exploring the intersections of science and faith. The site now has in the neighborhood of 300,000 links and 200 hours of video. The site helps readers of multidisciplinary texts find resources to understand the particular disciplines with which they may be less familiar, and facilitates discussion and education.
“The idea of using interactive technologies to teach, to help people understand multidisciplinary subjects, just struck me as an obvious move,” Wyard said. In a way, he sees counterbalance as penance for his lack of multidisciplinarianism as a youth.

“The one subject I disliked the most was history, because as far as I was concerned everything happens starting with Turing in 1950 or thereabouts, and that’s it, and I did not want to be distracted from my main interest,” in computers, he said. “Counterbalance is basically me coming to realize the error of my ways.”

He also overcame his dislike of history, eventually going to Oxford to earn a master’s degree in the history of science, studying under John Hedley Brooke. While at Oxford Wyard specialized in the study of the tension between creation and evolution. His adult education gives him a better foundation from which to approach these knotty questions.

A search for the truth

Many people like to depict science and faith as warring factions, but Wyard sees both as having the same goal of seeking the truth.

“There is no religious person, as crazy as they may appear to other religious people, or atheists or scientists, who does not in their heart of hearts want to find what’s true and would be horrified to think that they were being misled. That will forever bind the religious inclination and the scientific inclination,” Wyard said. “On balance, what you find is just a compulsion to find out the way the world works, and almost always be in awe of that. There’s so much common ground, it’s hard to imagine it ever conflicts.”

Yet it almost has to at times. The tension between science and religion is a complicated one, Wyard said.

“If you want to talk about all the sciences and all of the religions, you can easily find examples among that huge landscape, of overt conflict, where one says this is the case and the other says the opposite,” he said.

Conversation at Taproot

Wyard will be giving a public presentation to discuss these ideas at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16 at Taproot Theatre in Greenwood. The theatre is running Lauren Gunderson’s play, Silent Sky, about the Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The drama tackles some of these same questions, and Wyard said he’s been thinking about delving a little into postmodernism for the conversation.

“Sometimes that can be a rabbit trail that you really don’t want to go down,” he said of postmodernism. “For some people it’s a keyword for a lot of troubling things.”

But Wyard said that the modernist concept of knowledge, which was very much in play during the time in which the play is set in the early 20th century, held that knowledge accumulates, you reach a conclusion, and then you have the answers. Religion, he noted, sometimes operates in much the same way.

“At least what postmodernism has done is show that in the sciences, that does not work,” he said. “There are precious few lines of scientific inquiry that don’t require you to also understand the perspective” of which questions are asked and the context in which any experiment is being conducted.

Postmodernism, Wyard said, “recognizes that science exists in a socioeconomic political framework, and there is nothing that happens that doesn’t have some connection through to economics or politics or even just social mores and preferences.”

Learning more

Wyard suggests a couple of books that may be of interest to people wishing to delve into this line of inquiry. One is The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2007) by Francis Collins, who was lead of human genome project and is chair of the National Institutes of Health.

“That is a nice introduction because he takes us on the journey throughout his own story, which starts off as an athiest” though now Wyard said Collins identifies as evangelical. “He goes all the way through without losing any speck of his scientific interest and aptitude.”

The other book is Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013) by Terrance Deacon, an anthropologist and neuroscientist at Berkeley. Wyard said it’s a fascinating book, though a bit of a heavy lift at more than 600 pages. He is working with Deacon and his research team to try to bring it to a more accessible level. There are a couple of lectures about the book in Counterbalance’s Bridging the Gaps section.

The Planets Live

Wyard started doing art again about five years ago. He is getting into greater touch with his artistic side, collaborating on a multimedia presentation of Gustav Holst’s composition The Planets. The work, which Wyard describes as a live, choreographed video accompaniment of the piece, was first performed in 2014 at the Highline Performing Arts Center as a project with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra. It hit all the right notes with Wyard, “combining my knowledge of computers, computer technology, space, and also the photography side came in too,” he said.

While The Planets Live stands on its own as art—see the trailer below—Wyard is also excited about it as a “killer educational tool.”

“The Planets suite is a very accessible piece of music,” he said, noting that even kids who came in thinking that classical music is boring dug it at the premiere.

“They loved it because not only were the visuals interesting and stimulating, but it allowed them to access the music,” Wyard said. “It was a positive introduction to classical music, plus an introduction to astronomy.”

They did several other performances of the work in Sioux Falls last year with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, one of which was recorded and later aired by PBS. Several other performances are on the schedule for this year Lakeland, Fla. and Ann Arbor, Mich., and Wyard said they hope to bring The Planets Live back to the Seattle area again sometime soon, though this has not yet been set.
Adrian Wyard is an interesting person taking on some big questions. We expect you’ll hear more from him on Seattle Astronomy.

Senators and astronomy

We’re not in the habit of running obituaries on Seattle Astronomy—this, in fact, is our first one—but the recent passing of former state Sen. Harriet Spanel at age 77 merits mention here for a couple of reasons.

Former state Sen. Harriet Spanel passed
away Feb. 2, 2016 in Bellingham.
Washington State Senate photo.

The first is personal. Your correspondent served on the staff of the Washington State Senate during the 1990s, overlapping with Spanel’s first seven years as a member of that body. I found her to be a kind person and a pleasure to work with.

The second reason is more relevant to our usual subject matter. Spanel’s family has suggested a number of causes to which people could make contributions in memory of the late senator. One of them is the Dr. Leslie E. Spanel Memorial Planetarium Endowment at Western Washington University.

Les and Harriet Spanel met at Iowa State University when she was earning her degree in mathematics and he was completing a Ph.D. in physics. They married in 1961, moved to Bellevue in 1964 and to Bellingham in 1968 when Les began his teaching career at Western, where he was a member and sometime chair of the Physics Department and also was director for the planetarium. Les Spanel passed away in 2002. The planetarium, which was built in 1959, was named for him after Harriet made contributions in support of some major equipment upgrades in 2013. The planetarium is available for school groups, private shows, and also offers public presentations several times each month.

Harriet Spanel served three terms in the state House and four in the Senate before retiring from public office in 2009. She was chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus for a decade. A celebration of her life and a funeral mass are planned for 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 20 at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham.

Please consider a contribution in memory of Harriet Spanel in support of astronomy outreach and education at Western. Contributions can be made online through the Western Washington University Foundation. Be sure to make a note that your gift is for the Spanel Planetarium fund.

More information

• Spanel obituary
• Bellingham Herald article

Astronaut Wilson blazing trails to space

It’s interesting that so many people involved in space and astronomy can point to a particular moment when they became interested in the field as a career. For astronaut Stephanie Wilson it happened when she was about 13 years old.

Astronaut Stephanie Wilson spoke about
her inspiration for pursuing a career
in aerospace during a talk to participants
in the Michael P. Anderson Memorial
Aerospace Program Saturday at the Museum
of Flight. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“I was given a school assignment to interview somebody who worked in an interesting career field,” Wilson recalled. “I was interested in astronomy at the time, so I interviewed an astronomy professor at Williams College.”

Wilson said she was fascinated by the opportunities to travel, do research, and teach to which a career in astronomy might lead.

“That was my first interest in space and my introduction to science,” Wilson said.

Wilson spoke Saturday at the Museum of Flight in a presentation to the Michael P. Anderson Memorial Aerospace Program. The program, named after the Washington-native astronaut who died in the space shuttle Columbia tragedy in 2003, aims to provide inspiration and role models for students who are underrepresented in aerospace.

“It really started a thought process about what other opportunities were available and what were some other ways that I could function in aerospace,” Wilson said of her talk with the astronomy professor. “I also had an interest in working with my hands and understanding how devices are put together, so I did decide to study engineering in college.”

This statue of astronaut Michael P. Anderson
is outside the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

She earned degrees in engineering science at Harvard and in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas. Wilson held jobs in structural dynamics, robotics, and spacecraft attitude control before becoming part of the astronaut class of 1996. She was the second African-American woman to fly in space, going on three shuttle missions to the International Space Station. During her presentation Wilson showed video of highlights of her STS-131 mission in 2010.

She has logged 42 days in space, and hopes to go again. She said she’d especially enjoy a longer mission during which she could spend six months on the ISS.

Michael Anderson was part of the 1995 astronaut class, and Wilson met and flew with him during her early days with NASA. She said that gives her some extra affinity for his namesake aerospace program’s goals.

“I really hope that people see that, as a woman and as an engineer, I tried to worked hard in that field, I did the best that I could to advance those fields,” Wilson said. “I also hope that people see that I tried to make a path so that people could follow in those footsteps and continue on their work. I hope that young people will see that anything is possible.”

Local photographer published in S&T

A local astrophotographer has received a nice bit of global recognition for his excellent work. A photo of the Rosette Nebula by Matt Dahl, a co-owner of Cloud Break Optics in Seattle, has been published in the reader gallery section of the March 2016 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. Dahl has submitted a number of photos to the magazine in the past, but this is the first time one has made it into print.

Matt Dahl’s photo of the Rosette Nebula is included in the
reader gallery section of the March 2016 issue of Sky &
Telescope magazine.

“It’s really neat, and a lot of people have seen it, which is cool,” he said. “It’s good exposure.”

Dahl created the photo from more than 13 hours of exposures collected over two nights about a year ago.

“It’s a lot of work, a lot of time in the cold, and even more time in the warmth post-processing,” he said. “It requires a lot of time to get the detail that you want.”

“It’s definitely a process but it’s nice when it pays off,” Dahl added.

Interestingly enough, the gallery includes two shots of the Rosette, making for a nice comparison of the different results photographers can get depending on the filters they use and other techniques.

Photos, or just looking?

Dahl enjoys visual observing as well as astrophotography.

“One of the things I really like about imaging is that I have a goal and I get a product at the end,” he said. “I like the visual aspect, I like to be able to look at stuff. But there’s this whole process I go through. It’s somewhat cathartic, despite the fact that it takes a long time to do it. I really enjoy, and I find very relaxing, just sitting with my scope—or having my scope running, and sleeping!”

Dahl feels that amateur astronomers are making images that rival what professional observatories were turning out two decades ago, and they’re doing it with cameras that can cost as little as a few hundred dollars.

“The technology, both in its advancement but also in its affordability to the amateur, has been impressive,” he noted. “It’s nice to have this available as a means for enjoying the hobby.”

The March issue of Sky & Telescope is on the newsstands now. You can see some of Dahl’s other images on his Flickr page.

Find Uranus on Alki

While walking along Alki Avenue in West Seattle today I encountered the planet Uranus. Not the actual planet—that would create some unpleasant conditions—but an artist’s representation that is part of a scale model of the solar system created by kids at the Three Dragons Academy, an arts-based alternative for elementary-age children.

This sandwich board along Alki Avenue
SW marks the location of Uranus in the
 scale model of the solar system created by
students at Three Dragons Academy. Their
Sun, 18 feet in diameter, is outside the
University Heights Center 7.3 miles
away. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Last month the students, aged five through 10, studied painting and scale. This city-wide art installation is the result of their work. The Sun is an 18-foot circle painted and chalked onto the south plaza of the University Heights Center at NE 50th Street and Brooklyn Avenue NE. At that scale Uranus is about eight inches in diameter, and is at 58th Avenue SW and Alki Avenue SW, in front of Coastal Surf Boutique, across the street from Duke’s Chowder House, and just a block away from Astro Biz Blue Moon Burgers. That places Uranus about 7.3 miles from the Sun as the crow flies, at least according to the Google Maps measuring tool. The scale of the model solar system is about 1:253,718,000.

At that scale Mercury, just three-quarters of an inch in diameter, is a mere six blocks away from the Sun at 50th and Roosevelt. All of the other planets are represented, too, and, bless them, the students have even included some dwarf planets. There are a couple of one-third-inch Plutos out there, one up at Paine Field in Everett and the other in Des Moines. Ceres is on the University of Washington campus, fittingly enough near the Physics/Astronomy Building.

They’re already at work on figuring out the recently speculated upon Planet Nine, which is thought to have a highly irregular orbit. At its closest might be around Portland and at its furthest somewhere near Missoula, Montana. They’re not planning to make that trip to place a painting!

You can read more about the project on the Three Dragons Academy website and probably find a planet near you. Visit one or visit them all!

Mr. Eclipse says west may be best for 2017 total solar eclipse

Fred Espenak has earned the moniker “Mr. Eclipse” though almost 46 years of observing, predicting, and chronicling solar and lunar eclipses. Espenak spoke about The Great American Total Solar Eclipse, which will cross the United States in August 2017, during his keynote talk Saturday, Jan. 30 at the annual banquet of the Seattle Astronomical Society.

Fred Espenak, known as “Mr. Eclipse,”
gave tips during a talk at the annual
banquet of the Seattle Astronomical Society
for viewing the August 2017 total
solar eclipse. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Espenak retired in 2009 after a long career as the head eclipse guy at NASA, where he maintained the agency’s eclipse information pages. His photography of eclipses has appeared in numerous magazines, and he’s often tapped by the news media to provide expert commentary about eclipses. He’s had a hand in several books about the topic.

Espenak was bitten by the eclipse bug when he was in high school. He had just gotten his driver’s license and went on a 600-mile road trip to watch and photograph a total solar eclipse from Windsor, North Carolina in March 1970.

“I was overwhelmed by the experience,” Espenak said. “It was like nothing I had read in the books. The spectacle of totality just cannot easily be conveyed through books, through writing, through photographs, through video.”

The total solar eclipse that will happen on August 21, 2017 will be the first one visible from the continental United States since 1979. We’re lucky to live in the Northwest because some of the best odds for clear weather for the event are close by. That’s not the sort of sentence we write often on Seattle Astronomy.

Madras in August

“In Madras, Oregon the prospects there are 35 percent [cloudiness] from satellite data and 24 percent probability of clouds from the nearest airport,” Espenak said. “Madras is favored with probably the best long-term climate along the entire eclipse path, and that’s why a lot of people are heading in that area.”

Madras is about 45 miles north of Bend in central Oregon.

Espenak and eclipsing partner Jay Anderson have done some exhaustive analysis of the 2,500-mile path the total eclipse will take across twelve states from Lincoln City, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. Anderson crunched weather data from satellite photos and airport reports and found that, in general, our chances are better out west. The midwest is prone to thunderstorms in the summer and the east coast can get clouds because of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. But Espenak cautions about relying too heavily on history.

Where to see the eclipse

“I can’t tell you the magic place where the best weather is going to be,” he said. “All of these statistics that Jay has concocted and derived are based on climate and 20-year studies.”

“On eclipse day you don’t get climate, you get weather,” Espenak added. While he has no magic spot, Espenak plans to start his personal pursuit of the 2017 eclipse in Casper, Wyoming, which is near the center of the eclipse path and has pretty good weather prospects.

“Casper is the location where the Astronomical League will hold its 2017 annual conference, and of course that’s going to bring a lot of eclipse chasers there,” Espenak explained. “That’s also what will bring me there, the conference. But I’m not saying I’m necessarily going to watch the eclipse from Casper, because it depends on what the two-day weather forecast is before eclipse day. If the weather looks good, I’ll stay there. If not, I’m prepared to run.”

That is Espenak’s most important piece of advice. As with real estate, when it comes to total solar eclipses, location is everything.

“Mobility, mobility, mobility is the key to seeing the eclipse, especially in this day and age with the wonderful weather forecasts you can get 24 to 48 hours in advance,” he said. “The biggest thing to keep in mind is if some large frontal system is moving across the United States, because that’s going to be the exception to the rule that throws these weather statistics out the window. That’s what’s going to change everything. If there’s a big front coming through, you want to look at the forecasts and make sure that you are on the dry side and clear side of that front at your location on eclipse day.”

That might mean you have to drive hundreds of miles to get a view of the Sun on eclipse day. Espenak said just do it if you have to.

“It’s worth it to see the total eclipse,” he said. “It’s the most spectacular thing you will probably ever see with the naked eye.”

Don’t miss this eclipse

After a long drought, it’s interesting to note that another total solar eclipse will be visible from the United States in 2024. But Espenak cautioned that this is no reason to bail on next year’s event because of a cloud or two.

“You really need to take every opportunity, because you never know what hand you’re going to be dealt in terms of weather,” he said, noting that, even with all of the data available and his experience chasing eclipses, about a quarter to a third of the time the weather leads to disappointment.

“It’s just a fact of the game,” he said.

More resources

• Espenak’s interactive Google Map with eclipse times and other data for every point along the eclipse path
• Mr. Eclipse, Espenak’s website about eclipse photography
• Eclipsewise, Espenak’s site of chronicles and predictions of eclipses
• GreatAmericanEclipse.com with maps galore, history, gear, and more
• Eclipsophile: Jay Anderson’s site for eclipse weather information
• Eclipse2017.org: Dan McGlaun’s site with information on each community in the eclipse path
• Skippysky.com.au, with predictions of cloud cover
• NationalEclipse.com, another comprehensive site for eclipse info and gear

Books by Fred Espenak