What's going on during a solar eclipse is that the Moon is going to be moving in front of the sun from our point of view.

The moon's shadow will actually land on the Earth.

The shadow of the moon is round, but the moon is moving and the Earth is moving, so the moon's shadow will actually trace a band across the United States, and if you happen to be inside of that band and you look up at the sky, you'll slowly see the moon start to go further and further in front of the sun until there will be one moment where the sun is maximally eclipsed.

There's an eclipse coming up on April 8.

The path of the moon's shadow is actually going to go through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and then down south through Texas, and so you have lots of different locations where you'll be able to see the full eclipse.

Solar eclipses are not really all that unique.

On average, the moon passes in front of the sun, so we get an eclipse every few years.

What makes this one a little bit unique for us is how close it is to Central Pennsylvania.

So a solar eclipse, even though the path can be hundreds of miles long, many solar eclipses are only visible if you're on a boat out in the middle of the ocean.

So having a solar eclipse pass through the continental United States and having one so close to us in Central Pennsylvania is what's really rare.

For most of us, we can just drive to someplace and see totality.

The weather is a real big factor here.

You want it to be clear on the day of the eclipse, and all of those locations are not necessarily known for clear weather.

If you do choose to stay in State College or somewhere in Central Pennsylvania, we're going to be able to see approximately 95% of totality, so we will get close to a total solar eclipse, but the only way to see totality is to drive to one of those nearby locations.

One of the things we always point out, it is never safe to look at the sun with just your eyes, it's never safe to look at the sun with a camera, it's never safe to look at the sun with binoculars or a telescope.

The way to do this safely is you need solar filters.

And so what we're doing is we're handing out thousands of pair of these eclipse glasses and they look just like a mirror because they do reject most of the sun's light.

So they're just paper glasses that you can put on over your regular glasses and you can safely look at the sun with these on.

I'm looking at the sun right now I can see the whole disk of the sun.

It doesn't bother my eyes at all, but the only way to safely observe the eclipse for the entire duration is with these on.

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