Eclipse 101: Adam explains it all

I hope you have your solar eclipse glasses ready because that's the only and safe way to observe it when it happens on Monday.

If you didn't get them and want to make a homemade version check out 6abc.com/eclipse.

So this is what is going to happen:

Basically, the sun, moon and, Earth will align in a perfect fashion from the southwest to the north and east.

The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, however, it is 400 times farther away than the moon is from Earth. So during the eclipse, it's going to appear as if they are exactly the same size when everything comes together, when the orbit of the moon comes between the sun and Earth.

That is going to create a very dark narrow shadow about 70 miles wide across the country. That is called the umbral shadow that blocks the entire sun.

In our area, we'll have 80% blockage, so we are going to be in a larger shadow called the penumbral shadow, seen anywhere from Alaska all the way down to Mexico.

Many people are going to be wowed as all of this comes together.

This typically happens across the world once every year and a half, but the last time we saw something this big across the entire country - a partial or total eclipse - was 99 years ago.

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