Local Astronomy Enthusiasts Counting Down Days Until Great American Eclipse
By Julie Perine on August 13, 2017 via Connect-Bridgeport.com
When she was a little girl, Jeri Booher missed out on seeing an eclipse of the sun.
“My friend Patty Minard and I were told not to look at it or it would blind us,” she said. “So we hid under a picnic table.”
A lifelong astronomy enthusiast, Booher – a lifelong Bridgeport resident and member of the BHS class of 1973 - isn’t going to miss the Aug. 21 Great American Eclipse. Neither are her fellow members of the Central Appalachian Astromony Club. The club meets monthly at an observatory in Good Hope, located on the property of Joe Gonzalez, club president. Members have been studying and preparing for Aug. 21 when – in a very rare instance – the sun, moon and earth will align, blocking the light of the sun.
Here in our immediate area, the alignment will take place around 2:30 p.m. and provide 85.6 percent totality. Booher, however, has plans to watch from the Greenville, South Carolina area.
“We’ll set up a place in Greer, just outside of Greenville, so we can be there for three hours and see the whole thing happen,” she said.
“It’s along the 90-mile path of totality. We’ll see the diamond ring and the Bailey’s bead – where the sun comes through the valleys in the moon and will briefly turn reddish-pink. Right before the moon completely covers the sun, it looks like a diamond. Then it appears on the other side, so you can see a second diamond ring.”
She will be joined by her sister, brother-in-law Jim Welch (BHS class of 1965) and niece – all who share her passion for astronomy.
It runs in the family.
“Since I was little – growing up in Bridgeport – I loved “Star Trek” and any space movie out there,” she said. “I was always looking at the sky.”
As an adult, her fascination advanced to a new level when she purchased a four-inch telescope from the JC Penney Christmas catalog for her son Jeremy.
“We sat it up in the front yard and he told me to come look through the telescope at the moon,” Booher said. “I couldn’t believe it. I seriously thought he had a picture of the moon in there.”
Soon, she purchased a telescope with a bigger aperture.
“I saved money to buy it. It was a great big one. We had to build a crate for it,” she said.
Through their activity with the astronomy club, Booher and her son have witnessed some amazing sights, Booher said.
“At a star party at Blackwater Falls, we saw the whole sky light up red during the Aurora Borealis,” she said. “It was just beautiful for a half hour. Jeremy took his scope off the tripod and started taking pictures. It was wonderful.”
The glowing effect was caused by interaction between the planet’s magnetic field and charged particles from the sun. The grand finale, Booher said, was a shower of meteors, including a bonus fireball – an extremely bright meteor, brighter than magnitude -4 – similar to that of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky.
The Central Appalachian Astronomy Club encompasses 28 families, people of all walks of life who travel to Good Hope from a wide area – from Taylor to Wood counties - to participate in monthly meetings and activities. Included in the membership is Booher’s son, Jeremy Bumgardner (BHS class of 2005), now a student at West Virginia University’s School of Law. Prior to law school, Bumgardner earned a music engineering degree from Middle Tennessee State University and had studied astronomy at Penn State.
Bumgardner said he has been fascinated by astronomy since he was 8 or 9 years old – when his parents bought him that first telescope.
“I remember the first time I saw Saturn,” he said. “You see it in pictures but it is different seeing it with your own eyes. It was literally eye-opening and I have been hooked since then.”
During his freshman year at BHS – in 2001 – Bumgardner joined the Central Appalachian Astronomy Club.
“We saw in the newspaper that Club President Joe Gonzalez was having a meeting at the Gaston Caperton Center and my dad and I decided to go,” he said. “Almost every clear night during high school, I was doing photography or scientific studies.”
One of those studies was titled Transiting Existing Solar Planet.
“With my equipment, I was able to detect an orbital period around a star and confirm another planet existed outside our solar system,” he said.
During more recent years, Bumgardner has had photographs of nebulas and galaxies published in national astronomy publications.
He has seen a partial eclipse, but seeing a total eclipse of the sun here in North America is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he plans to check it off his bucket list.
“I might drive down to Nashville or in South Carolina somewhere in the path of totality,” he said.
Here in Bridgeport and throughout the area, those watching will witness a partial solar eclipse.
“The moon will cover about 85 percent of the sun, but it will still be extremely bright out and look like daytime,” he said. “But if you travel to the path of totality, the sun will completely be blacked out by the moon for about two minutes and 30 seconds and it will look like nighttime during the day.”
For the last 13 years, the club has taken part in a summertime Star Quest at Green Banks Observatory in Pocahontas County. As part of that event, children participate in a rocket launch with the help of Star Quest member, Jimmy Odell, one of the original Rocket Boys.
“Then on Astronomy Day in April, we launch smaller rockets here in Bridgeport,” Booher said. “Cyndi Shaver and her sister Janelynn Squires host that for members of our junior club.”
That club, called “Keep Your Eyes on the Sky” meets the fourth Saturday of each month at St. Barnabus Episcopal Church.
Like Booher, Shaver and Squires were introduced to astronomy as children and their interest continued to grow.
The Central Appalachian Astronomy Club encourages others to keep their eyes on the sky and develop their own passion for astronomy.
Booher serves as treasurer and board of directors member of the 501© 3 organization. As she learned when she was little, looking at the eclipse without proper eyewear can harm one’s retinas.
To ensure eye safety and to assist individuals in seeing the eclipse more clearly, the club has ordered and is distributing eclipse glasses. Those interested in the glasses – or the clubs – can visit www.caacwv.com.
Learn more about the eclipse HERE.
Editor's Note: Pictured from top: The Milky Way over the Nature Center at Blackwater Falls during Astronomy Weekend in 2016; A meeting of the Central Appalachian Astronomy Club; “Whirlpool Galaxy,” taken in 2004 by Jeremy Bumgardner; “Great Orion’s Nebula” taken in 2006 by Bumgardner.
