Hailed by many as the so-called Astronomical Event of 2017, will the August 21, 2017 Great American Eclipse be able to enlighten a science-starved America under the Trump/Pence regime?
By: Ringo Bones
The hype behind the upcoming Great American Total Solar
Eclipse of 2017 make it seems as if the current occupants of The White House
are not anti-science climate change deniers and yet the event could
reinvigorate - and even enlighten - the current science starved Trump
administration. Nonetheless, there are a lot of things to be grateful about the
upcoming celestial event given that the last one – where the path of totally is
right smack inside the continental United States – last happened back in 1918,
almost a hundred years ago.
The August 21 Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017
will have a path of totality of 70-miles or 113-kilometers wide and stretches
diagonally across the continental United States from the state of Oregon to the
state of South Carolina below the Mason-Dixon Line. Even the so-called “sleepy
town” of Depoe Bay, Oregon – more famed for whale watching than witnessing rare
celestial events - had been preparing for the great astronomical event of 2017
since last week. And if you are lucky enough to be in the path of totality by
Monday, August 21, all you need to observe The Great American Total Solar
Eclipse of 2017 is an eclipse shield to protect your naked eyes. Some serious eclipse
buffs will nonetheless be preparing their solar eclipse photo gear and a
filtered astronomical telescope. The next solar total eclipse whose path of totality falls in the continental United States will occur in 2024.
Many also hoped that The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of
2017 could rekindle some of America’s lack of interest in science and the
scientific method given that a sizable majority of them had elected a climate
change denier into The White House who also believes that the NASA Apollo Moon
Landings are faked by an elaborate US Government conspiracy back in the 1960s. Well,
at least those in the know might be laughing if the Christian Right U.S. Department
of Education secretary Betsy DeVos issues a “faith-based warning” about the
heath risk faced by pregnant women on having their fetuses acquiring defects when observing a total solar eclipse – which is for all intents and purposes a
faith-based superstition - when they observe The Great American Total Solar
Eclipse of 2017.
