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«Engaging the Public through Solar Eclipses, 2017 and Beyond: A NASA Perspective» Alex Young (NASA, USA). C. Alex Young is a NASA solar astrophysicist studying space weather in our solar system and beyond. He is the Associate Director for Science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the head of the NASA Space Science Education Consortium. Dr. Young led the NASA national education and outreach activities for the August 2017 total solar eclipse. TUESDAY – December 8
The August 21st 2017 Total Solar Eclipse public engagement program was arguably the largest, most complex, most inclusive, and most impactful education program ever achieved by NASA. This was the first total solar eclipse to cross the continental United States since 1979 and the first one to cross from coast to coast since 1918. NASA worked with a broad set of organizations as well as states and cities to help support and promote events across the country before and during the event. It was much more than an event though, it was an opportunity to engage over two billion people in the United States and throughout the world with rich STEM educational content, vivid imagery, safety messages, and citizen science opportunities. This amazing spectacle of nature is not the only such opportunity for the hemisphere. A total solar eclipse cross edChile and Argentina in July 2019 and will do so again in December 2020. Then the United States will have another chance to experience this in April 2024. With all the eclipse excitement in North and South America over a relatively short period of time, the public continues to hunger for more. NASA hopes to again help again, excite and inform the world of the next opportunity for the sun’s corona to shine. |
Invited Talk 3