For those stuck under a rock on Aug. 21 when the Eclipse Across America plunges moongazers along the narrow “path of totality” into darkness (and the rest of us into various shades of dim), “Nova” is coming to the rescue. That evening, the PBS science show will present a companion to this celestial experience — the first time since June 8, 1918, that a coast-to-coast total solar eclipse has occurred in North America — featuring footage shot earlier in the day by NASA and local public television stations in the path.
It will also feature interviews with scientists studying the 73-mile lunar shadow, as it travels from Oregon to South Carolina in an hour and 33 minutes, to understand the sun’s corona and the potentially deadly solar storms it generates. During the eclipse itself, “Nova” and “PBS NewsHour” will team up on a Facebook Live event featuring commentary by Jason Kalirai, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, who will be watching this cosmic spectacle from Idaho.
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the name of the PBS “Nova” show about the solar eclipse on August 21. The eclipse is generally called “Eclipse Across America,” but the show is called “Eclipse Over America.”
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