It’s the first total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States since 1979. The next one won’t occur until April 8, 2024.

A solar eclipse occurs when the sun and moon line up with Earth, with the moon in between. A total solar eclipse, when this alignment is exact, means that a person on Earth in the right place can see the moon completely block out the sun. Part of the reason the total eclipse is so stunning is because the sun and the moon are the same angular size, meaning that although the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, it’s also 400 times farther away. So the moon just barely will block out the sun in totality, making it appear to be twilight in the middle of the day.

Florida won’t be in the direct path, but NASA will stream video of the entire eclipse. People living south of South Carolina will only see a partial eclipse, but it’s still worth taking a moment to check out, as long as you can do it safely. The Planetary Sciences Group at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, the College of Sciences, and the student-run Astronomical Society will host a viewing party 2-3:30 p.m. in front of Millican Hall and the Reflecting Pond to mark the occasion.

Telescopes with special filters will be available for viewers to safely observe the eclipse. Solar glasses also will be available to attendees, and professors and students studying planetary sciences will be on hand to answer questions.

“We wanted to make sure folks here would have the opportunity to see the eclipse,” said physics associate professor and Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Robinson Observatory director Yan Fernandez. “It will be a partial here, but it will still be pretty spectacular if it doesn’t rain. So even though some of us will be on the road, we wanted to make sure our community had the opportunity.”

Fernandez and several other professors and scientists from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ will join thousands along the eclipse’s path of totality. That’s a swath that runs from Oregon through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina where spectators will be able to observe the eclipse in its totality – for a little more than two minutes.

“It is really impossible to describe, but truly amazing,” said Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ physics professor Humberto Campins, who will stay on campus to help with the viewing event. He traveled to Costa Rica in 1991 and Curacao in 1998 to view solar eclipses. “We hope the weather holds out here, but if you have a chance, go to the path of totality. It really is awe-inspiring experience.”

Most hotels within the path of totality have been sold out for weeks, according to media reports. It’s no surprise to Campins, who said that during his previous trips hotels were sold out months in advance and the internet slowed down to a crawl because of the number of people sharing photos and their experiences on social media.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” said Noemi Pinilla-Alonso, an associate scientist at the Florida Space Institute based at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝. She specializes in solar-system formation, particularly surface compositions of minor bodies. She will meet scientists from Spain who are flying to Idaho Falls to observe the eclipse. “It will be my first. I can’t wait to see it, you know to see day turn into night and then back into day.”

Scientists nationwide, along with NASA, will study the eclipse. Solar eclipses have been used to test aspects of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. More recently scientists have been studying eclipses to improve the accuracy of measurements of the moon’s orbit and to improve the mathematical model for the gravitational interactions between Earth and the moon.

Hurricane Matthew interfered with the originally scheduled event in October, which coincided with International Observe the Moon Night. But organizers wanted to make sure the community had an opportunity to get a close view of the night sky before the university’s winter break. The viewing normally is held at the Robinson Observatory on campus.

If the weather cooperates, the moon, Venus and several other planetary bodies will be visible through the telescopes. Check the group’s Facebook page for weather updates, especially if rain sneaks into the forecast.

The event is just one of the many events the Department of Physics group coordinates. It also hosts a student-run Astronomical Society, weekly seminars, and biweekly “Knights Under the Stars” sky viewings at the observatory, which are open to the public.

Yan Fernandez, director of the observatory and a physics associate professor, said the program’s mission is one of education and outreach to share the wonder of the stars with the world at large.

“I feel like it’s part of the overarching mission of a university to educate people to become better citizens, and that means knowing something about lots and lots of things,” Fernandez said. “Astronomy is well-placed for that because it’s easy – compared to some other sciences – to draw people in thanks to that gee-whiz factor. You can show them pretty pictures from the Hubble Telescope, for example, but then they can come down to the observatory and see these things with their own eyes.”

The Robinson Observatory on the main campus was established in 1995 after members of the Central Florida Astronomical Society discovered a 26-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope in storage in Gainesville, according to the Planetary Sciences Group website. Orlando benefactors Herbert and Susan Robinson helped raise half of the $500,000 necessary to build an observatory to house the telescope, where it resides to this day.

“It’s a good training ground for some of our graduate students,” Fernandez said. “It’s a good place to get a feel for how data collection and experimental methods in astronomy actually work before they get into the professional world.”

“I love looking through telescopes,” said Zoe Landsman, a Ph.D. candidate in planetary sciences who works as a graduate teaching assistant at the observatory.

“Being able to see the rings of Saturn or Jupiter’s moons with my own eyes is amazing, and I love the excitement in other people’s eyes, in the visitors who come to the observatory and see those same things. I enjoy being able to foster that appreciation, especially in the younger generation when they first see these objects magnified and close up.”

It’s that sense of amazement that caught the attention of Jeff Jorges, president of the astronomical society and a senior physics major. He and the club members regularly host events at schools, where they teach elementary and middle school students how to use telescopes and how to identify constellations.

“There’s a social element to the club of people being together and talking about their interests, there’s an outreach element where club members help out at local events and there’s a teaching element where, even if you don’t know anything about astronomy, you can come and have fun and learn something,” Jorges said.

Every year, the society launches a bearing a payload of cameras and sensors into the upper atmosphere. Since the balloon is at the mercy of Earth’s prevailing winds, the team has to examine atmospheric data the day of the launch to determine roughly where their payload will land after descending from heights of around 85,000 feet. This year, the society is attaching a device called Tracksoar that will provide telemetry data such as altitude, pressure and temperature readings while still in flight.

“It’s definitely one of our more popular events,” Jorges said. “We spend nearly a year planning each launch. It’s really rewarding to build something from scratch, to send it up and to retrieve it and have video proof, like seeing the curvature of the Earth, to show for our efforts.”

NASA is in its final preparation stages of the OSIRIS-REx mission, which is expected to launch in September from the Kennedy Space Center. On Friday, 25 social media managers from across the nation are getting a first look at the spacecraft that will go to an asteroid, tap its surface and collect a sample of alien material before bringing it back home to Earth. It’s the first time America is attempting this kind of mission.

Two Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ professors are part of the mission’s imaging team. Pegasus Professor Humberto Campins and associate professor Yan Fernandez will help obtain and analyze maps of the surface of asteroid Bennu using the spacecraft’s onboard cameras. The University of Arizona is the lead institution and has assembled a team of national experts to assist. The maps will provide information about the topography and the physical and chemical characteristics of the surface of Bennu. This will help select the “TAG” (Touch and Go) site for sampling, and will also provide interesting scientific results about Bennu and other related asteroids.

Jennifer De Witt, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s social media manager, will give the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ community this rare opportunity. She’ll see the spacecraft at in Colorado.

De Witt also will have access to Lockheed Martin’s  ”asteroid wall” and the mission-control room where the flight will be directed. The wall is a 50′ x 50′ space that provides more than 3 feet of topographic relief and is painted to match the low reflectivity of a common carbonaceous asteroid.

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ will tweet from noon to 6 p.m. providing followers exclusive information and photos.

“I’m no space geek, but it is pretty exciting to be able to have an exclusive look at such a historic mission,” De Witt said. “I can’t wait to bring the content to our users.”

Tune in Friday on Twitter @Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝.

Leos Pohl, a second-year doctoral student in Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s Planetary Sciences Group, will join two dozen other students at the observatory’s headquarters in Castel Gandolfo, a resort community just southeast of Rome.

“It’s one of the best opportunities in the world to get an introduction to planetary science,” said Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ physics professor Dan Britt, Pohl’s graduate advisor. “They get the very best experts in the world to teach it, and they select no more than two people from any one country. Just getting selected is quite an honor because it is hugely selective.”

During the month-long summer school that starts in late May, students from more than 20 nations will focus on the role of water in our solar system and cosmochemistry. Leading experts in astrophysics will direct lectures, presentations and hands-on projects, and students will present their own research.

It meshes well with Pohl’s research focus: asteroids, which experts theorize carried water to Earth. Even so, Pohl wasn’t sure he would be picked for the selective summer camp.

“I had no idea,” Pohl said. “With the specialization of water, I thought there might be many more students who were better-suited. It’s like fishing. You throw your bait in the water and you wait, and you don’t know if you’ll catch a fish.”

Leos Pohl in front of Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝’s Robinson Observatory.

Pohl, who grew up in the village of Krinice in Czech Republic, earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in theoretical physics from Charles University in Prague. He came to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ last year, the culmination of a search for universities in the United States that have quality planetary science programs.

The Vatican Observatory is headquartered at the papal villa, within the papal gardens in Castel Gandolfo. It traces its origins to an observational tower erected inside the Vatican by Pope Gregory XIII in 1578. It was formally established inside the walls of Vatican City by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, but moved to Castel Gandolfo in 1935 to escape Rome’s nighttime light pollution.

Robert Macke, a Jesuit brother who earned his doctorate in physics from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2010, is curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory and dean of the summer school.

Five proposed space missions would study Venus, near-Earth objects and a variety of asteroids and comets. Each mission team will receive $3 million and have a year to get their proposals ready for a final round of review. At that point two missions will be selected to fly as part of the NASA Discovery Mission program. The final two missions will get about $500 million in addition to launch funding.

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Physics Professor Dan Britt is co-investigator of the Lucy project, which would perform the first reconnaissance mission of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. This collection of asteroids is thought to hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., is the principal investigator.

“This shows that Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ has become a serious player in NASA’s planetary exploration program,” Britt said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

Yan Fernandez, an associate professor of physics who specializes in comets and is the director of the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Robinson Observatory, echoed Britt’s excitement. He is a co-investigator of another selected project: the Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam).

NEOCamould discover 10 times more near-Earth objects than all NEOs discovered to date, according to NASA. It would also begin to characterize them. Amy Mainzer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is the principal investigator. Along the way, the project would also discover more comets and collect much more detailed data about comets already known to exist.

“This is so exciting,” Fernandez said.  “To be involved with a mission that’s  potentially answering such fundamental questions, and to be involved at this detailed level is thrilling,” he said.

The other projects are:

Created in 1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals, according to NASA. The program has funded and developed 12 missions to date, including MESSENGER, Dawn, Stardust, Deep Impact, Genesis and GRAIL, and is currently completing development of InSight. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.

“The selected investigations have the potential to reveal much about the formation of our solar system and its dynamic processes,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Dynamic and exciting missions like these hold promise to unravel the mysteries of our solar system and inspire future generations of explorers. It’s an incredible time for science, and NASA is leading the way.”

NASA’s Discovery Program requested proposals for spaceflight investigations in November 2014. A panel of NASA and other scientists and engineers reviewed 27 submissions.

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s Robinson Observatory is sponsoring the event on the mall as part of their “Knights Under The Stars” series to give students, faculty, staff and the general public a chance to see the eclipse from one of its 10 mobile telescopes. Faculty and students from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s Planetary Sciences Group and from the Astronomy Society at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ will be on hand to help participants with the telescopes and provide expert commentary about what they are seeing.

“This is the last total lunar eclipse visible from Florida for three and a half years,” said Yan Fernandez, an associate professor of physics at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ and director of the observatory. “This is a great opportunity to see the moon up close during a rare event. We should also be able to sneak a peek at Saturn and its rings while we’re out there. We can’t wait to share the excitement with students, faculty, staff, the general community and children especially, even if the next day they have school.”

A total lunar eclipse happens when the moon passes entirely into Earth’s shadow and gets cut off from all direct sunlight. The moon takes on a dramatic red hue as some sunlight bends around Earth while passing through our atmosphere. The alignment of the sun, the moon, and Earth has to be quite precise for an eclipse to happen. This also happens to be what NASA calls a super moon event. for more about that.

The total lunar eclipse is expected to last from 10:11 to 11:23 p.m. with partial eclipse views available before and after. Bring a chair and blanket in case it gets chilly and check the observatory’s beforehand to ensure rain doesn’t cancel the event.

Robinson Observatory is a research and education facility run by the faculty and students of the Planetary Sciences Group and the Astronomy Society within the Department of Physics.  For more about the observatory click here.

For more information about the event contact Fernandez at yan@ucf.edu or at 407-823-6939.

From 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., observers will have an opportunity to view the moon through several telescopes set up at Knights Plaza near the CFE Arena. Students and professors associated with Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s Planetary Sciences Group will be on hand to help viewers decipher the many lunar features they will see through the lens.

There also will be activities geared toward children: star charts, meteorites, demonstrations and other activities, such as “Find the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites on the Moon,” playing off the popular “Where’s Waldo?“ books.

The goal is to share the wonder of astronomy with youngsters and potentially inspire a new generation of space explorers with physics degrees.

“We’re very excited,” said Yan Fernandez, director of the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Robinson Observatory and an associate professor of astronomy and physics. “A lot of us remember looking at the night sky through telescopes as children and being in awe of the things we saw, like the moon, our nearest neighbor. We want to make sure children in Central Florida have that same opportunity.”

A similar event last year drew more than 100 people. An observation night was scheduled last month, but rain forced the volunteers to cancel the event.

“Because it gets darker earlier now, we hope to see people who might otherwise would not have been able to visit in September, when the sun sets later, closer to kids’ bedtimes,” Fernandez said. “And the cooler weather should make for crisper views through the telescope.”

The event is free but parking fees apply. To get live updates, especially if the weather is questionable, look for the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Robinson Observatory on Facebook at .

You may get your chance this weekend. The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Planetary Sciences Group is offering an opportunity to take a close look at the moon on Saturday, Oct. 12, as part of International Observe the Moon Night.

From 6 to 9 p.m., students and faculty members will have several telescopes available to the public for free so that they can get a close look at the moon. The event, at Knights Plaza near the CFE Arena on the main campus, is open to adults and children.

“We’re eager to share with the public the wonder of the moon. People see it all the time, but they hardly ever get to check it out in detail,” said associate professor Yan Fernandez. “We’ll be there to tell people what they are looking at – craters, mountains, lava plains, where the Apollo landings were, that sort of thing.”

Despite nearby interfering light, there should be ample opportunity to see the moon and perhaps the planet Venus, weather permitting, Fernandez said.

The event is free and open to the public. Parking fees apply. To get live updates, especially if the weather is questionable, look for the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Robinson Observatory on Facebook.

Hundreds of groups, from national observatories to libraries around the world will be holding similar events the same night, according to the international group’s website. The group consists of scientists, educators, and Moon enthusiasts from government, nonprofit organizations, and businesses throughout the United States and across the globe.

According to the website, the goal of the members is to “create the opportunity for people to take notice of the Moon’s beauty and share that experience with one another. Through International Observe the Moon Night, we hope to instill in the public a sense of wonderment and curiosity about our moon.”

For more information, email planets@physics.ucf.edu.

The annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting kicked off in Denver on Saturday drawing thousands of scientists from around the world who study the solar system and its early formation. DPS is the largest professional organization of planetary scientists and is part of the American Astronomical Society.

Nineteen students and three faculty members are presenting findings at the meeting, through Oct. 11, which is a school record, said Daniel Britt, a professor of physics at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ and a former chair of DPS.  The most students to attend in previous years had been 15.

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ students also snagged more than 50 percent of the free travel money available to students nationwide to attend the meeting thanks to their stellar work in the field and their early applications, Britt added.

“It’s quite a year for us,” Britt said. “It’s very exciting. We are well represented.”

The undergraduate and graduate students will present on a range of topics from detailed studies of asteroid impacts to an analysis of bending waves found within Saturn’s rings.

For example, physics doctoral student Tracy Becker is presenting a talk about the rings of Saturn. She analyzed data from the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft that is currently orbiting Saturn, to measure the size and population of small particles in Saturn’s A ring. Constraints on the particle sizes in the rings contribute to the overall understanding of the origin and evolution of the Saturnian ring system, with applications in exploring planet formation, proto-planetary disks, and the structure of galaxies.

Students in physics professor Joe Harrington’s Exoplanets Group will present on a wide range of research related to the more than 1,000 planets discovered outside our solar system, which was made possible in the past few years thanks to a variety of modern instruments such as NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. They include:

Attending the conference gives students an opportunity to interact with other leading scientists in the field and giving presentations provides them invaluable experience, Britt said.

Comet ISON comes from the Oort Cloud, a refuge for icy debris jettisoned by Jupiter and the other giant planets to the distant reaches of the Sun’s influence back when the planets were just forming. ISON is creating quite the buzz within the space community since it is now making its first trip back toward the sun since then.

“It’s been in deep freeze for about four and a half billion years,” Fernandez said. “It’s pretty exciting because it likely has some clues locked inside its nucleus about how our solar system formed. Because comets from the Oort Cloud are so old and relatively pristine, we want to take advantage of what they can tell us about our solar system’s earliest days.”

Fernandez is part of NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign team that’s been coordinating and facilitating observations of the comet since January. He is also part of another team that took the first infrared images of ISON with the Spitzer Space Telescope in June and released the

“As it gets closer to the Sun we expect to get more detailed information than ever before about the comet,” Fernandez said. “And on Thanksgiving Day, ISON will get to within only 750,000 miles of the Sun’s surface, so it’s going to get really hot. That’s pretty fantastic. It means all sorts of materials that we can study are going to be boiling off the comet – ices, rocks, metals. For the general public it could be a-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a really bright comet. We’re hoping that in November and December you can see it with the naked eye at night right from your backyard.”

That is, if ISON doesn’t blow apart first.

ISON, like all comets, is a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methanol, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. These are some of the fundamental building blocks of planets. As a comet gets closer to the sun, it heats up and its outer layers evaporate away. Spitzer images revealed that ISON is gassed up, with the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in its icy outer layer already boiling away and producing a bright tail. There is a possibility that as ISON gets closer to the sun, the evaporation of ices will become so intense that they will destroy the structural integrity of the comet before observers on Earth get a clear look.

Right now ISON is still too far away (well beyond Mars’s orbit) to know for sure how big it is and what its make up is exactly, Fernandez said.

“We might then get a better idea of what the comet will do and how bright it might get in November, but that’s one of the crazy things about comets – they like to defy predictions,” he said. “ISON might disintegrate to nothingness, it might survive but under perform, or it might indeed be a comet-of-the-century. We’ll just have to wait.”

Estimates are that ISON is less than 2 1/2 miles in diameter, about the size of a small mountain, and that it weighs between a few billion and several trillion pounds.

Should ISON remain intact come the fall, and if it seems like it will become bright enough, Fernandez said he will be organizing observation nights for the public from on Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s main campus. Fernandez is the observatory’s director.

“We’re in the planning stages right now,” Fernandez said. “But if people are willing, we expect to have some opportunities in mid to late November for the public. It may mean getting up at 4 a.m. for best viewing, but we’ll do it.”

Should ISON keep it together as it loops around the sun and boomerangs back toward the outer solar system, Fernandez says more viewing nights will be added in December. But it would still mean getting up before dawn.

“We’ll have a better idea when it gets a wee-bit closer, say some 200 million miles from the Sun in early September, so stay tuned,” he said.