Eclipse experiment progresses despite clouds in Naperville

By the time Colin Jensen and Shirley Wu joined their peers Monday to watch the solar eclipse from the football field at Naperville Central High School, they had already contributed to true scientific research.

The seniors set up four tracking devices on the roof of the school to measure the rate of muouns, a type of subatomic particle, traveling toward the earth from space during the eclipse.

Their measurements, which were unaffected by the cloud cover that broke occasionally as the eclipse crossed Naperville, will be submitted online to Fermilab as part of a broader research project. The eclipse recordings will be compared with measurements the students took earlier this summer of muouns' rate of progression toward the ground during sunshine, under the moon and with an empty sky.

"Using technology that we have today, we can track (muouns) and learn more about the environment around us," Wu said.

Students' scientific understanding of the eclipse varied widely.

The school's roughly 2,900 students were invited to gather at the football field to watch the historic event. Some looked up from the turf Monday afternoon and just said, "It's cool," or snapped a smartphone photo through their eclipse glasses. Others appreciated the rarity of the event, having learned that although eclipses occur two or three times a year, they're often visible only over oceans.

"I thought that was really beautiful," freshman Andrew Lindstrom said after getting one unobstructed view when the clouds broke and the whole school seemingly glanced up in awe at once. "But right now the clouds are covering it so you can't really see."