On Monday, April 8, Environmental Studies Director, Dr. Beate Liepert and CESH lab tech, Quincy Ross, lead students in eclipse science, measuring the total energy reaching the Earth from the Sun. The Physics Program and Physics Club provided students with special filtered eclipse glasses for direct viewing, telescopes with solar filters, projection systems, pin-hole cameras in the afternoon near Kline. While there wasn’t a total solar eclipse at Bard, the sun will start to be occluded by the moon at 2:11pm with the occlusion peaking at 3:26pm with 95% of the sun covered. Students gathered all around campus right from Blithewood to Stone Row and the Campus Quad to watch the eclipse.
The glass dome, visible to the left in the picture, measures total energy from the sun and splits it into direct and diffused light. Quincy noticed that “the total energy reaching earth from the sun got much much weaker as the eclipse went on.”
The equipment helped put a numerical value to what the students were observing was happening. It appeared to be getting darker and cooler which indicated that the power of the sunlight was reducing. There was also a telescope set up and one could even see a sunspot in that one photo! A projector screen was set up to reflect the sunlight onto a screen through another telescope to view the eclipse.
Read the full eclipse report HERE
