(bright music) - Welcome to Eclipse 2024.

My name is Kevin Melvin.

Next to me, that's Janelle Roberts.

We are part of the on-air staff at WHOU 100.1 FM, and we are happy to be hosting in Houlton, Maine, the Eclipse festivities, and I hope you're all having a great time, and I hope you're enjoying Houlton, Maine.

If you're not from here, welcome in.

We are glad to have you.

- So far, we're loving it.

It's been cool to get here early this morning and see people start to funnel in, see the buzz start to grow.

- We're from Seattle, Washington.

We came all the way to Houlton, one because the weather looked like it was gonna be the best, and two, because we've got some family in the area, and it was an easy place for us to stay.

- It has been amazing.

There's a lot of people home that used to live here, visiting with family and friends.

There's media folks, NASA's here, and everyone that I've talked to is in a great mood.

They're having a wonderful time.

- My partner and I wanted to come to the East Coast.

He'd never been to the East Coast, so we flew into New York City and then rented a camper van and drove up to Houlton to be in totality.

- We're from Linneus which is only five or six miles south from here, little town.

We just come in to check out town, then we're gonna go home, watch the eclipse with the dogs and relax.

(drum beating) (people singing) - I think for us, there's teachings behind the eclipse, and it's really about rebirth and renewal and just shedding that negative energy and moving forward in a good way.

So for us, this is a great time to celebrate.

- My name is Eric Smith.

I'm the James Webb Space Telescope Program scientist and the associate director for research in the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters.

Astronomy's been a field that's benefited throughout its history from the great interests that people have, and there's a lot of amateur astronomers, a lot of amateur solar astronomers here today with their telescopes.

It's actually amazing to see them all.

But in addition to that, there are projects that NASA has where you can participate in helping us determine the shape of the sun to help us determine how nature reacts as the shadow comes across, and even how the earth responds, the temperature changes that we witnessed during a total solar eclipse.

I'm super excited to see it.

This will be my first totality, and I'm delighted I can see it here in Houlton, Maine.

And if you ever wanted to be called the Sunshine State for one day, today's the day, and so Maine is the sunshine state for today.

(bright music) - It's something that people are gonna be experiencing all over, and I guess it's not easy to feel united with everything across the states today, and this is something that it doesn't matter where you come from or who you are.

We all get to experience this together, and it's really special.

- The thing about the eclipse is that you have to know a little bit about space to understand how rare it is, and understanding that we are, as human beings, overlapping with a timeline in which the eclipse can happen.

So, that's what it is for me.

- Yeah, there's only a few million years left where eclipses like this can happen, so it is pretty incredible that we're alive during a time when we can see all this kind of stuff.

(bright music continues) - I think it is just one of these things, because it's so eerie the way the color of the sky changes, the darkness in the middle of the day, the temperature dropping, you really feel this thing, and it is something, I guess, out of this world or cosmic in in nature.

I mean, it's a special alignment, but it's also everything that goes with that.

It's not something that we experience in everyday life.

And again, you have to be in the right place at the right time to see them.

Most people are lucky if they get to see one or two total solar eclipses during their lifetime unless they're willing to travel, and that's why they're so special.

(mysterious music) (mysterious music continues) - It's magical.

(laughs) - [Crowd] Five, four, three, two, one.

(crowd cheering) - [Observer] It was this really eerie feeling leading up to it, and I didn't want it to feel eerie, but that's really how it felt.

And it was really phenomenal.

We're so glad we did it.

We won't be around in 2076 or 77, (laughing) so.

- [Observer] It was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen in my life, then when it was total, it was like, whoa, and just seeing how everything was changing around around us, it was like, whoa.

It was really, really cool.

It was the best thing I've ever seen in my life.

(mysterious music) (mysterious music continues)