Questions, Concerns and Myths about the Eclipse

The upcoming solar eclipse is getting a lot of hype with safety glasses selling out at just about every store.
Some people are excited about seeing the phenomenon.

“I think it’s going to be good. It’s not something that our children see a lot of and we are going to take our children, my grandchildren, down to Tennessee to see the eclipse,” said Peggy Jones.

Others say they won’t be watching it.

“I can’t tell you too much what I think about it. I’ll be at work so I won’t be paying attention to it,” said Danielle Jones.

Whether you are paying attention or not, Gayle Planetarium specialist Trish Jester says they are getting concerned calls.

“Anytime you see an event like this people will go back to scripture and the moon turning blood red. So we have lunar eclipses and we start to get the phone calls of “do you think..” or you’ll have two or three planets in conjunction in the sky that will line up and then people start to call again about the world coming to an end,” said Jester.

Maybe not everyone is thinking the world is coming to an end.

“No, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. You never know when Jesus is coming back but I don’t think its the end of the world yet,” said Brown.

But there are other concerns that Jester wants to explain.

“The ones that we get now days is “well, we hear the sun’s rays are strong during an eclipse, so can we go out?” There is no difference. The sun is the sun and the moon is passing in front of the sun. It’s just an event that we don’t see very often. In regards to looking at the sun… you don’t go out and look at the sun anyway,” said Jester.

Experts to advise to wear protective eclipse glasses to view the eclipse.

Make sure they have an ISO label to meet safety standards.

Peak viewing time for the Montgomery area is 1:34 p.m. Monday.

Categories: Montgomery Metro, News