This year’s eclipse among the rare planetary events captured (and explained) by Campbell University physics professor
A solar eclipse in 2017. Mercury’s transit in 2019. The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 2020.
They’ve all been captured by Big Blue, Professor Jason Ezell’s reliable 12-inch spit Cassegrain reflector, and each rare astronomical event has been memorialized in paint on the outside of the large, cylindrical telescope.
On this day, Ezell’s sitting outside of his office on the third floor of Campbell University’s Science Building, paint brush in hand, adding a fourth major celestial event — the 2024 solar eclipse. A few weeks earlier, he and his astronomy students hosted a public viewing on campus near the bronze camel in front of the Pope Convocation Center. The conditions were perfect — warm, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky — for an outdoor gathering, and more than 300 Campbell students and faculty showed up to stare at the sun through sun-safe glasses and witness the moon’s trek between earth and sun.
For Ezell, the science outweighs the “cool factor” — though, he admits, it’s still pretty cool. The eclipse was a learning moment for his students, and for him a reassurance of cosmic truth.
“The earth is a complicated place, but there’s a degree of order behind it,” Ezell says. “Before we understood the science of an eclipse, I’m sure it all seemed very chaotic [centuries ago]. It got dark, the wind would blow, animals would disappear … but then the sun came back and everything returned to normal. Those who chose to take a breath, watch and learn were able to piece everything together and understand it.”
Once humans figured out the Earth, moon and sun’s “three body problem,” they were able to predict — to the second — when future eclipses would occur and where they would be visible on our planet. That’s why on April 8, 2024, Ezell knew viewers in Buies Creek, North Carolina, would begin to see the moon’s appearance in front of the sun beginning at approximately 1:58 p.m.
That’s also why when Big Blue froze at around 1:50 p.m. that day, there was panic.
“We’d set her up about an hour beforehand, and she was tracking the sun just perfectly,” Ezell recalls. “Then when she froze, I said, ‘My gosh, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.’ I looked at one of my students and said we had to reset everything, which takes about five minutes once it figures out its GPS location. But we got it back up with about three minutes to spare, and right on time, that little black dot started to appear.”
Back during the 2017 eclipse, Big Blue’s image was broadcast live on the giant scoreboard at Barker-Lane Stadium. This time, the screen was much smaller — a 50-inch flat screen TV under a tent. But the majority of the crowd on hand seemed to prefer the free eclipse glasses handed out that day. Almost as much as the event itself, Ezell enjoyed the community environment of the April 8 event.
Just a group of people enjoying science.
He’s been a part of the Campbell community since long before enrolling as a student at Campbell in the late 1970s. He’d go on to earn a Master’s Degree in Nuclear Physics from N.C. State University. His research interests have included using microanalysis methods to identify naturally occurring radionuclides (excess nuclear energy) in the environment. In 2011, he discovered radioactive particles over the U.S. stemming from an accident at a nuclear plant in Japan days earlier.
He returned to Campbell as a professor in 1999 and just finished his 25th year teaching physics and astronomy. His office on the third floor of the Science Building feels like that of a scientist who’s been here a while — various plants make for tight quarters (there’s even a pineapple plant), and he shares the space with a caged hamster, a fish aquarium and a turtle.
He points to a book with its cover barely hanging on and shares that it’s his first physics book, given to him by his high school biology teacher in nearby Dunn.
“I took every biology course my school offered, so when I was 18, I ended up taking physics, because that’s what all the seniors did,” he says. “And it was wonderful.”
Nobody can predict the future, he says, but thanks to our understanding of physics, some parts of the future are certain.
“I think back to Edmund Hayley when he predicted the comet was going to come back,” he says. “He had worked with Isaac Newton and thanks to everything he learned from him, he was able to work out the path of the comet to an unprecedented accuracy. He died about a decade before it returned, but he passed away knowing it was going to happen.
“Having that knowledge, it’s magical. It’s just really magical.”
The science learned from solar eclipses
On April 6, more than 300 Campbell University students and faculty gathered near the bronze camel in front of the Pope Convocation Center to watch the solar eclipse.
While the event was simply “cool” for many in attendance, it was more than that for Professor Jason Ezell and his students. The following are just some of the scientific findings made possible over the years by solar eclipses:
- Studying the innermost part of the corona — visible only during total solar eclipses — is key to answering fundamental questions about how heat and energy are transferred from the Sun out into the solar wind, the constant stream of particles that the Sun spews into the solar system.
- Total solar eclipses provide an opportunity to study Earth’s atmosphere under uncommon conditions.
- In 1868, physicist Jules Janssen discovered a new element while observing the sun’s chromosphere through a prism during an eclipse. Astronomers named the element Helium, after Helios, the Greek god of the Sun. It would be more than 25 years before helium was discovered on Earth, but we now know it’s the second most common element in the universe.
- Scientists are learning about changes in behavior for some animal species on Earth that occur when the sun is blocked.