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00:30Huge, resolute, brilliant. The sun we think we know. It provides the most romantic settings,
00:46the most restful vacations, the subject of our earliest imagination.
00:53People think of the sun as a simple yellow ball.
00:55It's pretty quiet and rises and sets and really doesn't do a whole lot.
00:58It's a source of warmth, a source of light, and a source of happiness.
01:03It is so common we don't look at it, and so powerful we can't.
01:08It's somehow ruling our bodies. It rules all the other animals. It rules everything else
01:12that happens on the planet.
01:13Ancient people knew to align themselves with the power of the sun. They built Stonehenge,
01:18Tikal, and Machu Picchu with great devotion.
01:24They were the ones who made the world go round or the sun go round.
01:29Today's solar scientists certainly have their own specialized tools to look at the source
01:33of our warmth, the source of our food, our energy, our light. Yet for all of us, the
01:44sun's power and mystery remain.
01:47We forget that it rules us as well.
02:12Have you ever considered balloonists to be creatures of the dawn?
02:17They often are, flying their craft in that calm window of time that exists after first
02:25light, but before the sun has heated the land enough to create a breezy, bumpy flight.
02:38In Guilin, China, the light appears each day for people in the city park.
02:49With these movements, they greet its warmth, much like their ancestors did eight centuries
02:56ago.
03:04These are merely two of the million small fingers of the sun that reach into the landscapes
03:10of our lives.
03:17We are profoundly dependent upon its heat and light.
03:25It's impossible to imagine a tomorrow without the sun.
03:34In the past, the strange, brief absence of the sun during an eclipse was deeply unsettling
03:39for ancient people. To this day, we view an eclipse with wonder and a tinge of fear.
03:48What are some of the small secrets of the sun?
03:53For animals.
03:56For the ancient people who built the great celestial structures.
04:02For today's solar scientists.
04:06If we look at the details, we will see an extraordinary star in this ordinary sun.
04:36Every morning, our spinning world reveals the sun as master timekeeper for each community
04:56of life on the planet.
05:04In Siem Reap, Cambodia, the center of the community is the Buddhist temple called Wat
05:09Tse.
05:10The coming sun triggers the morning meditation for monks.
05:15The light welcomes the arrival of children at the compound gate to start the school day.
05:21Wherever you look, you'll see the morning sun, engaging the life of the entire Earth.
06:10Beyond the daily cycles, the sun determines seasonal patterns for life on the planet
06:32by setting water and ground temperatures, cloud and surface cover, and the lengths of
06:39day and night.
06:47Migration, like these alewives waiting for warmer waters off New England.
06:57Or hibernation, like these recently awakened brown bears of Alaska's Katmai Coast.
07:13Halfway between the South Pole and the equator, we see other small secrets of the sun.
07:21In the largest colony of Magellanic penguins in the world.
07:28To get here, birds must sense the increasing sunlight of spring, and then migrate a thousand
07:35miles or more.
07:38The purpose?
07:40Spring cleaning, nesting, and the launch of a new generation.
07:46Once they're settled ashore, they face a second challenge triggered by the sun.
07:52Excessive heat for their already warm bodies.
07:55A major problem that these Magellanic penguins have, because we think of penguins of course
08:00as found very deep in the south, but this is not very far south.
08:04This is a temperate species of penguins.
08:07Here the problem for penguins is heat.
08:10So what they do to be able to stay cool is they end up losing the feathers around their
08:16bill.
08:17So it exposes the bear skin on their face.
08:22And if it's hot, just like a runner gets a red face, a penguin will get a red face.
08:26What they're doing is shoving all the blood into the exposed skin and losing the heat
08:31that way.
08:32They also lose heat off their feet, and then of course by putting out their flippers.
08:45For penguins here, the sun's heat has a major effect on body temperature.
08:51Elsewhere, the sun plays a role in the survival of a species.
09:00A thousand miles north, deep in the Amazon rainforests of eastern Peru, we see other
09:07little-known responses to the sun's heat and light.
09:15An hour or so after sunrise, something unusual happens along the shores of the Madre de Dios
09:21River in areas where exposed clay deposits are softened by the morning heat.
09:37Hundreds of colorful birds collect here, like dusky-headed parakeets and cobalt-winged parakeets.
09:48Parrots, parakeets, macaws, and parrots, they all eat the clay to protect themselves
09:55because they are seed predators.
09:59Before they go to eat somewhere in the forest, they need the clay.
10:06Each morning, the birds have two goals, both dependent on the sun.
10:12The first is to eat some warmed clay from this bank, called a culpa or clay lick.
10:19The clay contains minerals that protect these birds' stomachs from the toxicities of the
10:24seeds they will be eating for the rest of the day.
10:30The second goal, particularly during September and October, is courtship.
10:37Male birds need to attract mates.
10:40To do so, they flash brilliantly colored underfeathers in the light of the sun.
10:53For food, shelter, energy, and order, all of Earth's creatures depend upon the sun,
11:04including us.
11:07Before fire and electric lights, we spent a million years cowering in the cold darkness,
11:14hoping for the sun to come back each morning.
11:19We've been living on this planet a whole lot longer than we've been thinking about the
11:22planet, and there are things ingrained in us, and they're based on where's the sun,
11:27when's it coming up, when's it going down, when's it going to be warm, when's it going
11:32to be cold.
11:37Perhaps our response to the sun is deeply genetic.
11:43Perhaps it is spiritual, evoked by the beauty and wonder of creation.
12:02The sun certainly provides some of nature's best special effects, collected in the book
12:08The Sun.
12:10The idea behind the book was to sort of tease out the different colors of light, the different
12:15ways that it impinges on and affects and drives life.
12:20And we were just astounded.
12:21And once we started looking for the solar effects, you know, rainbows, yes.
12:34The authors found sunrises and sunsets with different kinds of light reflections.
12:43They became entranced with the variety of effects.
12:49Simple and elegant.
12:50Ice, you know, there's also water ice in the atmosphere, and that's causing things like
13:04sun dogs.
13:14You get sun pillars, if you look at a sunrise or even a sunset, you'll see sort of a pillar
13:21of light stretching out of the bottom of the sun, the top of the sun.
13:24What it is, is that it's light bouncing off of the crystals of ice in the atmosphere.
13:31Something called a Brocken specter, which is like your own shadow looking down from
13:35a peak, and then you see this arc around you.
13:38I didn't even know it existed.
13:44More complex and mysterious, found in the cold skies of the extreme northern and southern
13:50hemispheres, is a polar light show that once witnessed, is never forgotten.
13:58The aurora.
14:12The sunset, where'd the sun go?
14:14The day's over, but an aurora is an expression of the sun's energy in our atmosphere at night.
14:22We live in the sun's atmosphere.
14:25When the sun streams out particles, they excite molecules here, releasing light.
14:34Auroras have painted our skies since the earth began.
14:38The Vikings imagined they were a bridge to the gods.
14:42Others felt they predicted great feasts or great famines.
14:47They are another example of the sun's reach, occasionally providing light to the darkest
14:52night, relentlessly providing warmth to the coldest day.
15:14The sun's powerful force inspires awe, fear, and devotion.
15:22People of the past ritualized these emotions and responses, aligning themselves with the
15:27sun more than we do today.
15:31We have much to learn from studying their life with their star.
15:48The Stonehenge, of all the places we can talk about on earth, it's timeless.
15:55And that's really what makes a wonder of the world.
16:00Many aficionados of the sun, sun worshippers, still go there on the solstice, feel they
16:04get meaning out of being in front of those stones.
16:10Stonehenge was built over thousands of years, a monumental prehistoric stone circle on the
16:17Chalk Plain of Salisbury, England.
16:20There's a marvelous alignment of Stonehenge, well known since the time of Stokely in the
16:2318th century.
16:24And that is that the axis of Stonehenge, the axis of that horseshoe-shaped trilithons,
16:30which were built around 2750 BC, that alignment goes through, goes over a heel stone, which
16:37is a large megalith, now tilted, and it points to the place where the sun rises on what we
16:43would call the first day of summer, what the modern Brits call midsummer, midsummer's day.
16:51Many have searched among the stones for other alignments, with the moon and other celestial
16:57events.
16:59Theories have been suggested, but the old rocks will not give up their stories.
17:05And we've only clues about the people who came to this plain, first to move the rocks,
17:11then to move among them.
17:16Stonehenge goes back to about 3000 BC, probably started by a group of maybe seven or eight
17:22or ten extended families of about 150 people apiece.
17:27These were nomadic, largely nomadic people.
17:30We're talking about Bronze Age Britain, a long time ago, preliterate, no written history.
17:362750 BC, some wise guy gets the idea to make this thing in stone, and that's really what's
17:41marvelous about Stonehenge, it's the different kinds of stone that went into its building.
17:47It was a monument for all time.
17:53I think it probably was a true believer who was the workforce here.
17:58They would have worked all their lives, their kids would have worked all their lives, and
18:03their kids would have worked all their lives.
18:05It was about the process of building, not about the finished product done on time, on
18:11budget, which is us.
18:13And they're not us.
18:15What was important about the building process nearly 5000 years ago?
18:21What did the true believers of Stonehenge believe in?
18:26We know that in the beginning it did have that axis and that causeway pointing directly
18:31to the solstice sun.
18:33So there must have been some fundamental sun worshiping going on.
18:39Because the stones draw the curious eye and so many questions, they've provoked the most
18:45thought.
18:46Less known is the evidence that the causeway, a two mile long path leading down to the river
18:52Avon, was heavily used.
18:56This really suggests to us that Stonehenge is all about assembly.
18:59It's all about people parading up that grand highway or causeway to go into the center
19:05of the enclosure.
19:06And what did they do there?
19:08They had a market.
19:10They had a place of worship.
19:11They probably held worship services to their gods who were undoubtedly the sun and the
19:16moon to judge by the alignments.
19:19And they interacted, they socialized, they bonded themselves together as a society.
19:25And then they went off to do their farming and other things that they had to do.
19:29Now there's strong evidence that a lot of this bonding and this inner circle or inner
19:34sanctum of the great Stonehenge took place around the June solstice.
19:38And on that date the sun makes its appearance.
19:41What a fabulous time to have Stonehenge bathed in the morning light as people walk up that
19:47causeway, their long shadows being cast into the center.
19:50And of course if I were the ruler, I'd be the first guy in the parade and my shadow
19:54would enter that inner sanctum first.
19:58The society that placed these stones, once nomads, were increasingly farmers.
20:05Aware of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.
20:10That's the time the sun here reaches its maximum northerly position.
20:15Trees bear fruit.
20:17Animals are fat.
20:19It's a time of prosperity.
20:23These people really had a sense of participation.
20:26They really felt that they were the ones who made the world go round or the sun go round.
20:38And we, of course, as modern people, may have all the savvy and all the knowledge, what
20:43goes on inside the sun and the moon, but we don't participate in it.
21:08High in the Andes of Peru, secrets of the sun are revealed in the 16th century Inca
21:15Royal Sanctuary of Machu Picchu.
21:38The most beautiful moment is actually when the summits of the mountains receive the first
21:53rays of the sun.
21:56Magical.
21:58Now, the light is fantastic, the colors, the shadows.
22:09The whole place becomes alive and you actually are filling yourself with this golden light
22:17because the color is very important.
22:21It's very warm and I've seen many people opening their arms and welcoming the sun.
22:34The Incas believed the world was the work of a creator who rose out of Lake Titicaca.
22:40As he headed north, he formed these mountains before entering the Pacific Ocean.
22:53On departure, he promised to send a daily reminder of creation.
22:59Every morning at sunrise, you see it happening again.
23:04The light comes onto earth and at the moment that the top of the summits are shining with
23:10a golden ambient glow, you know that the sun is there.
23:18The Incas believed that it was the sunlight, not the sun itself, you know, as a master,
23:24but the light that the sun generated that was divine.
23:27And it was that light what created life on the earth.
23:31They were not too far away from what reality is.
23:36So the divine was manifested through the sunlight and that was impersonated in one of their
23:42leaders called Inca.
23:44This Inca, as when your god is very difficult to delegate, the Inca had to create a system
23:51to multiply his presence all over the empire.
23:54And to do so, he constructed places, he constructed observatoriums, he constructed places where
24:01the ritual observation of sunlight will happen twice a year.
24:06One observation happened at the summer solstice.
24:09The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, was marked here in Machu Picchu at this
24:14structure, the Torreón, or the Temple of the Sun.
24:21Now that's a really interesting event when the sun reaches the solstice.
24:25It's the time of year that's equivalent to our Christmas.
24:28Our Christmas comes from a pagan Roman festival, the Day of the Unconquerable Sun, Die Solis Invicti.
24:36And that's the day when the sun is threatening us with leaving our world, with going the
24:41farthest to the south.
24:43And I imagine the ancestors of the Inca would have been very anxious when that sun began
24:48to go away.
24:49But the idea of bringing the sun back on that day, very important.
24:54And it's why, incidentally, we celebrate Christmas on that day because when the Christians took
24:59over the pagan festival, they thought, well, this is the time to bring the light of Christ
25:03into the world.
25:06Winter solstice time, that was marked on the skyline.
25:09If you look over in the mountains, there is a V out there.
25:15And through that V, the sunlight will come exactly into the window that's down below
25:21in the Temple of the Sun, marking that rock that's laying down there with a perfect shape
25:27of a trapezoidal window projected into the rock.
25:32And some astronomers who've studied Machu Picchu think that it's possible that there
25:37was a wooden device that was put on that window with a wire or a string on it, which would
25:42be such that the shadow of that string on the solstice sunrise would go right down that
25:47beveled edge, which, in fact, it would.
25:51And this moment is the beginning of the return of the times, and also, of course, is the
25:56beginning of the time in which the sun, the Father, is back to protect and give life.
26:10A thousand years earlier than the Inca, and farther north, a culture arose in the tropical
26:16jungle with its own secrets of the sun.
26:23Between 200 and 800 A.D., the Mayan civilization blossomed across Central America,
26:31a huge complex of cities extending from Guatemala to Mexico.
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27:31Well, of course, if you look at the environment around Tikal, it's a jungle.
27:35It's a typical rainforest, three layers of grove.
27:40Howler monkeys, all sorts of snakes and lizards, the kind of environment you wouldn't find
27:45in Cincinnati.
27:47The Maya were very closely tied to this environment, and everything they saw had meaning,
27:52and the meaning was always cast in symbols.
27:56For example, did you know that in the previous creation, the gods created monkeys?
28:01And it was monkeys who were the dominant population.
28:08We still see the remains of some of their ancestors climbing around trees,
28:12for they once ruled the world.
28:16The Maya were a highly literate culture.
28:19At their peak, they amassed libraries, wrote sophisticated calendars,
28:23and recorded events on upright stone tablets called stelae.
28:28Skilled astronomers and mathematicians could make thousand-year predictions
28:32of the exact movements of the sun and other celestial bodies.
28:37And the Maya were superb builders.
28:40Well, if you take a vantage point in Tikal, such as the Lost World Complex,
28:45you'll have a view of the ancient skyscrapers of Tikal.
28:50Temple 4, the tallest of them all, 230 feet high, hasn't been excavated yet.
28:56Then, off to your right, you'll see Temple 1 and 2,
28:59almost as if they're dialoguing with each other, perfectly aligned with the equinox.
29:04The buildings in this great Guatemalan city of 150,000
29:07were all carefully planned and constructed by a succession of kings,
29:12a dynasty that lasted almost seven centuries.
29:17Control of time was a particular obsession for these Mayan kings.
29:23The Mayan kings were known for their ability to control time.
29:28Control of time was a particular obsession for these Mayan kings,
29:33who had one word, kin, that meant both day and sun.
29:58The Maya reasoned that the sun controls the seasons.
30:03There's no question about that.
30:04When the sun is here, when it's high in the sky, there are these plants and animals.
30:08When it's low in the sky, there are those plants and animals.
30:10I'm not talking cause and effect here.
30:13I'm talking about an associative relationship.
30:16You associate the position of the sun with the position of the planets.
30:20You associate the position of the sun with the position of the planets.
30:23I'm talking about an associative relationship.
30:25You associate the position of the sun with the behavior of things on earth.
30:34Now, to track the movement of the sun in Tikal,
30:37they had a really interesting instrument.
30:41It was an instrument consisting of an architectural assemblage
30:44called the Lost World Assemblage.
30:47And it consists of a radial pyramid on the west side of an open plaza,
30:52and on the east side are three structures,
30:54one on the north, one in the middle, one in the south.
30:59The sun would rise behind one of these three structures,
31:02indicating the longest day of the year, the shortest day of the year, or the equinox.
31:12The Maya brought celestial observation into every aspect of their life, and every hour,
31:19not just to keep track of time on the longest and shortest days.
31:23These people believed the sun and moon spoke to them.
31:26Their astronomy was paired with astrology.
31:29They took cues from the heavens to guide every step of their life.
31:34Gathering under these temples and great plazas,
31:37including the open space recently called by some the Lost World Observatory.
31:43And I think we really have to start to rethink this word observatory.
31:47Now, when we think of the word observatory, what comes to mind?
31:51Scientists, white coats or not,
31:54very precisely working on predicting with unerring accuracy
32:00where something is going to take place.
32:02I think that the observatories of the Maya were more like planetaria.
32:07It's a theater.
32:08It's a place where you go to witness events that take place in the cosmos.
32:15The job of the astronomer is to set up that specialized architecture
32:20so that the sun may be delivered to the appropriate place at the correct time,
32:26so that the sun can be worshipped.
32:29And I can well imagine the worshippers goo-gooing at the sun
32:36when it came over that tower at exactly the right time.
32:39And that's the work of astronomers. That's what an observatory is.
32:42It's not so much about precision and collecting data
32:46as it is about creating a theatrical spectacle.
32:50Astronomy is theater.
32:58Across time, ancient peoples have lived with the sun.
33:03Day by day, season by season, century by century.
33:13Terraces of stone and feats of engineering.
33:17Each structure brought the sun closer to them, symbolically closer to Earth.
33:24This proximity, in fact, is the past's secret of the sun.
33:33Today, from various vantage points on the planet's surface,
33:37solar scientists participate in their own way with their own set of tools.
33:43Ground-based studies of the sun are often interrupted by bad weather,
33:47by night, and by the optical interference of dust and particles in the Earth's atmosphere.
33:54To avoid this, in 1996, scientists successfully reached a clear vantage point in space.
34:03There's a very key location that is about a million miles away from the Earth.
34:07We call it the L1 point.
34:09And it's the point where the gravity of the sun and the gravity of the Earth actually balance.
34:14So if you put a satellite there, it will stay in orbit around that point.
34:19The sun's 93 million miles away, so L1 is about 1% of the way to the sun.
34:24So it's always pointing at the sun 24-7, so you get uninterrupted data for a very long time.
34:31The new view of the sun we've always known requires leaving Earth.
34:35But leaving Earth makes all the difference.
34:49The Sun
35:04Activities of the sun are now recorded by satellites,
35:07such as the one called SOHO, for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory,
35:12modeled at SOHO Command Central in Greenbelt, Maryland, with a 1-10th scaled replica.
35:17Well SOHO is a major mission that was developed in conjunction with the European Space Agency.
35:23And it was a European idea, but the Europeans realized pretty quickly
35:27that it was getting too expensive to build it just by themselves.
35:30So they teamed up with NASA.
35:34SOHO holds 12 instruments, each offering access to our star's secrets.
35:41Ultraviolet, X-ray and magnetogram, to name a few.
35:47More instruments on newer satellites like TRACE, STEREO and SDO will further reveal secrets of the sun.
36:04Along with SOHO, they'll use different spectrums of light to measure the sun's atmosphere,
36:09otherwise known as the corona.
36:13At the sun's surface, a white light measurement reveals 6,000 degrees Kelvin.
36:19Moving further from the surface, UV light measures 60,000 degrees in the lower corona.
36:27And even further away, in the mid-corona, it's 1 million degrees.
36:36Strangely, the sun's atmosphere gets hotter as we move away from the surface.
36:42Hiding the solar winds of the corona.
36:52One of the big mysteries, I think, for solar scientists is just why the solar wind is there.
36:57Why this outer layer, the corona, is hotter than the solar surface.
37:07We take pictures of the sun.
37:08The sun is so bright that if you just take a picture of the sun, you won't see the corona around it.
37:12So we create artificial eclipses.
37:14We put a disc that blocks out the light of the sun,
37:17and our cameras are able to see this lovely, hazy atmosphere continually streaming away.
37:25That's the little armature that holds that disc in place, right?
37:28Exactly, yeah.
37:29That's just a little metal boom that keeps this little metal disc in place,
37:33like a thumb on the sun.
37:36And the white circle indicates how big the sun actually would be.
37:41The particles that loop and stream from the sun's corona are created by powerful magnetic forces.
37:48These tangles erupt into massive ejections.
37:54The rotation on the sun is not constant at the poles and at the equator.
37:58The equator actually spins slightly faster than the poles.
38:03So it's hard to visualize, but if you think of taking a piece of string and you're pulling the center,
38:09that's going a little bit faster than the outside.
38:12The sun's magnetic field rotates with the sun.
38:15So if you start pulling that middle bit just a bit quicker than the outer bits,
38:19it starts to get very confused fairly quickly.
38:22The middle is no longer a nice uniform.
38:24It's stretching and twisting.
38:26And as it becomes more and more confused,
38:28little loops of this magnetic material pop up above the surface of the sun.
38:33You can see these on several of the beautiful images.
38:37These loops, now you've got something sticking up.
38:39It's not in its happy configuration.
38:41And it's very easy for that to then be ejected away as a coronal mass ejection.
38:46You see this stored up energy.
38:48You see this evolution.
38:49You see these magnetic loops always evolving.
38:51And you can really get an idea of the power of that eruption.
38:55You realize the size of that eruption compared to the size of the Earth.
38:59And these eruptions are just thousands of times larger.
39:11When you have an eruption on the sun,
39:13then you get like this huge cloud of plasma moving towards a certain direction,
39:17for example, the Earth.
39:19And it impinges upon the Earth's atmosphere
39:22and generates strong currents and electric fields in the high layers of our atmosphere.
39:28And the most beautiful thing that you see is it will power very intense aurora.
39:38These particles that come in from our magnetosphere,
39:40they strike our atmosphere and they excite these oxygen atoms and molecules.
39:45And they will emit light until they've come back down to their ground state.
39:52For solar scientists today,
39:54a deep new knowledge of the sun and Earth
39:57is flooding in from remote vantage points in space.
40:03We are always watching that star on the web.
40:06We have our cameras that are out there 24-7
40:09beaming the pictures back all the time to us.
40:12Yet it's clear that today's relationship to the sun via satellite
40:15is quite different from that of past cultures,
40:18when a directly observed sunrise
40:20meant the difference between feast and famine,
40:23strength and weakness.
40:25We have these science images,
40:27these beautiful views of the sun all the time, 24-7.
40:31And yet, when I get up in the morning, let's say, and see a sunrise,
40:35I don't really think of it as a sunrise.
40:38When I get up in the morning, let's say, and see a sunrise,
40:41I don't really think of it in terms of those other kinds of imagery.
40:45So there is a bit of a disconnect sometimes.
40:48I think even when you're on vacation,
40:50you can be lying on the beach and looking up at the sun and thinking,
40:53I hope it doesn't do anything really exciting while I'm away
40:56because I'd hate to miss it.
41:00So the irony, the wonderful irony,
41:02is this deep knowledge,
41:04the very esoteric knowledge about the sun,
41:06all very valuable and useful,
41:08but the most direct knowledge of it,
41:10when it rises, where it sets, what time it is,
41:12what represents it,
41:14is almost totally absent.
41:18On this morning, viewable from this Brazilian beach,
41:21a rare and special event is about to begin,
41:25a total solar eclipse.
41:28The Moon
41:32Shortly after sunrise, here,
41:34the Moon will move into direct alignment between the Sun and the Earth.
41:39For a few lucky people on this day,
41:42the Moon will completely block the Sun
41:45and cast its own shadow on Earth's surface.
41:49The shadow will travel from here across the Atlantic,
41:52over Africa, Turkey and Asia
41:55at a speed of at least a thousand miles an hour,
41:59before ending at sunset in Mongolia.
42:07I have never seen a total solar eclipse.
42:09I would, I'd love to see an eclipse.
42:11I'm always in the wrong place.
42:13When I lived my whole life in England,
42:15never a solar eclipse.
42:16I've made a poster about eclipses and written about them.
42:19I moved to America and the first year I'm away,
42:22there's a solar eclipse visible from England.
42:24I will see one before I die.
42:30Something very ancient and primitive about viewing an eclipse,
42:34and at the same time, something extremely scientific.
42:37An eclipse is an excellent opportunity
42:39to study the outer atmosphere of the Sun.
42:42The Moon is an entire planetary body
42:45and it blocks out the Sun's
42:48photospheric light
42:50better than anything that we've been able to design thus far.
42:55It's one of those places where science
43:00and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
43:13I've witnessed eight eclipses of the Sun,
43:15all total, and I've been very lucky.
43:25The Moon is a planetary body
43:27and it blocks out the Sun's photospheric light
43:29better than anything that we've been able to design thus far.
43:31It's one of those places where science
43:33and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
43:35It's one of those places where science
43:37and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
43:39The Moon is an entire planetary body
43:41and it blocks out the Sun's photospheric light
43:43better than anything that we've been able to design thus far.
43:45It's one of those places where science
43:47and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
43:49It's one of those places where science
43:51and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
43:53It's one of those places where science
43:55and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
43:57It's one of those places where science
43:59and sort of spiritual, visceral human life comes together.
44:23Apollo 11
44:41You start by watching that first contact
44:43between the Moon, the New Moon,
44:45and the solar disk.
44:47It is kind of fun to look
44:49and seeing how closely you can predict that.
44:51predict that. Who's going to see that first bite? Is it going to be on time?
44:59And then there's that long period, about an hour and a half, where
45:03you get partiality and the bigger and bigger bite.
45:08And then as you get closer to totality, the sharp shadows that come from the sun,
45:13which now acts more like a point object. It's a slit. And we're so used to illumination by a disc,
45:20which gives you diffuse shadows. And now the shadows get sharp.
45:24The light gets pale. There's a brownish color. The air gets still because the temperature drops.
45:35And then it really is literally like taking a
45:38quilt or a comforter and pulling it over your head. It gets dark.
45:41And it happens that fast. And it's in that moment, that few seconds when that shadow
45:52was just about over you, that if you turn your eye to the sun, you'll get that glimmer
45:57of sunlight coming down a valley between a couple of mountains on the moon.
46:02That two- or three-second experience of that flash of light,
46:07followed by the consequent disappearance and darkness.
46:19Those five seconds are the most exciting moment for me, and I think probably for most eclipse
46:25watchers. I will never forget a woman standing next to me was crying,
46:31tears flowing down her face. And she said, it was a miracle. It was a miracle. She was so taken
46:38with darkness in the daytime, with the rushing shadow of totality coming like a blanket over
46:45the earth, with the stars and the planets bursting out of the sky. And she said,
46:52with the stars and the planets bursting out into the environment and the strange
46:58feeling from the behavior of nature, she was overcome by that. And so were other people.
47:03That's what an eclipse is. And I don't think it was any different for ancient Stonehengers
47:09when they saw it.
47:52When we take the time to notice them,
47:56the simplest and most common of experiences can be the most miraculous.
48:04Each morning, the sun gives us that time.
48:22Direct, ever-present, and powerful beyond belief.
48:35Galileo, the man who first pointed his telescope toward the sun, described our star well.
48:42The sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch
48:50of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do.