UNT students take road trip to see solar eclipse

A handful of University of North Texas students are on a 14-hour road trip to Wyoming just to see the full solar eclipse.

The group of students will soon be joined by their professor, who had one last minute lesson to give at one of UNT’s astronomy centers.

For those who are not traveling to see the eclipse, people can go to the UNT Rafes Urban Astronomy Center and look through their telescope.

Since 1968, UNT Astronomy Program Director Ron DiIulio has seen eight of them.

"More people are going to view the moon passing in front of the Sun on the 21st of this month than ever in history,” he said.

So he's loading up for a road trip. He and a handful of UNT students will be traveling to Orin, Wyoming, one of the viewing sweet spots or 'line of totality.’

"So what we're actually doing is doing a video shoot where we can do 180-degree fish eye of the event in real time,” DiIulio said. “And then we can bring totality here to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and they can see it just about any time."

It's an astronomy gold mine for his students. DiIulio says they'll use some high powered telescopes.

"This solar filter rejects 99.9 percent of all light coming through it,” he explained. “So the only thing bright enough to show through this filter is the Sun's light. Consequently, you can't see anything except the Sun through these filters. And that's what those filtered glasses are — they're the same kind of material."

For more information on Monday’s event open to the public, visit the UNT Rafes Urban Astronomy Center Facebook page.