An eclipse tracker is available at the bottom of this article
Today, April 8, is the day of the highly-anticipated total solar eclipse.
While Virginia and North Carolina are not in the line of totality, we're still going to see something: about 80% of the sun will still be covered due to the eclipse.
So, what does all of this mean? What's really going to happen? News 3's Blaine Stewart spoke with Marty Mlynczak, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, to get an expert's take on the eclipse.
WATCH: Time lapse shows the solar eclipse in upstate New York
Check out Blaine's questions and Mlynczak's responses below:
What is an eclipse? What's going to happen today?
Mlynczak: Today is a really cool day. We're going to have an eclipse, a total eclipse, with the sun over most of the U.S.
An eclipse is when the sun, the moon and the earth line up. The shadow of the moon comes across the Earth, and then those of us down here on the surface get to experience that, either in totality or a part of it.
We'll see a partial eclipse [in Hampton Roads], about 80% maximum coverage, somewhere around 3:20 this afternoon.
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Compared to the last total solar eclipse in 2017, what can we expect to see in Hampton Roads?
Mlynczak: So I was fortunate to be out in Idaho, and I actually saw totality in 2017. So that was really cool.
I think we're going to be a little less covered here today in Hampton Roads than we saw before. But we still, at 80%, nearly 80% coverage, ought to have a really nice show.
And if you wear these nice glasses... safety is the key to eclipse viewing. Rule number one, two and three: wear your glasses.
But you get to see the sun will be mostly covered by the moon around 3:20 this afternoon. A very cool viewing.
So 3:20 p.m. is our sort of sweet spot there. How long does this whole process last?
Mlynczak: So it's about two and a half hours from start to finish. It'll begin a little after 2 p.m. this afternoon and finish up just after 4:30 [in the evening]. And that, again, that maximum coverage will be about 3:20.
What is NASA studying during the eclipse?
Mlynczak: I'm very fortunate to be part of a NASA satellite team... Our satellite will be flying kind of right through the eclipse today. And we'll get to see the atmosphere, the upper atmosphere of the Earth, right before the eclipse, right in the eclipse and right after the eclipse.
National News
Tracking the path of the solar eclipse
And we get to look at that part of the atmosphere [in] a way we never get to see it. We never go from daylight to nighttime to daylight in a period of a couple of minutes. And we saw this in 2017, so we're really excited to look back and see what we saw then and compare it with what it looks like today, and how the atmosphere responds in this eclipse event.
This was really cool science for us to do and we get a chance to do this every, you know, four or five, six years. And again, in the U.S., we won't get a chance until, I think 2044, to see an eclipse again. So it's a rare opportunity to do some really neat science.
