An Out-of-This-World Graduation Gift
No one is more excited about the upcoming total solar eclipse than physics major Tyler Karasinski ’24.
Tyler trained to become a NASA Partner Eclipse Ambassador so that he could help prepare the campus and wider Canton community to fully experience—and understand—the marvel heading their way on April 8. Using resources provided by NASA and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, he’s spent the past academic year educating students on campus and in North Country schools.
“I’m considering this an amazing graduation gift,” says the North Haven, Connecticut native, who chose to attend St. Lawrence in part because of the North Country’s lack of light pollution, which means darker skies for stargazing. “My first week in Canton, I drove my car out to a side road just off Route 11. I sat on the roof of my car, and staring up at the sky I could see the faint smudge of the Milky Way. I remember calling my dad and saying, ‘I wish you could see this!’”
During his study abroad semester at the University of Otago in Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand, he and his friend, physics major Ryan Carvel ’24, received an enrichment grant through St. Lawrence’s Center for International and Intercultural Studies (CIIS) to travel to the University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory during spring break. Its location in the remote Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve on Mount John, a 3,383-foot-high peak in the Southern Alps of the South Island, allowed for phenomenal viewing.
Karasinski viewed the full Moon through one of the observatory’s high-powered telescopes and was able to see the shadows of the mountains on the Moon being cast by the Sun. He looked at star clusters, and even some of the more prominent nebulae in the sky. When you are viewing the sky from the vantage point of New Zealand compared to northern New York, everything is upside down, including the constellations along with the Moon.
“I was in love, absolutely thrilled with the whole experience,” he says, adding that he has been accepted to and is deciding on a Ph.D. program for the fall.
In January, Karasinski attended the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans to give a poster presentation of his senior research project, which explores the mass of spiral galaxies with a research group called the Undergraduate ALFALFA Team, a collaborative consortium of institutions engaged in an NSF-sponsored program to promote undergraduate research.
He was in good company. Not only did he travel with his mentor Henry Priest Professor of Physics Aileen O’Donoghue, he had the opportunity to meet some physics department alumni who are advancing in their own careers as professional astronomers, including: Steven Goldman ’13, science software engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute; Evan Smith ’16, a scientific data analyst at Green Bank Observatory; and Hailee Perkins ’22, a graduate student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
You don’t have to be a trained astronomer to fully appreciate the total eclipse, Karasinski is quick to point out. In fact, he expects those three minutes when the sky goes completely dark in the middle of the day to be profound for everyone lucky enough to be in the path of totality.
“More than anything, it’s this moment of no matter what is going on in your life, no matter what is happening around you, it’s this moment of, wow, there is something so beautiful in this world, and every single person within a hundred miles of me is experiencing this exact same moment at this exact same time,” Karasinski says. “I think that is such a powerful thing.”
Total Solar Eclipse Info
We've gathered all of our resources and expert insights to create your very own total solar eclipse information hub. Stay up to date on what you can expect on April 8, read stories from our community, and even commemorate the out-of-this-world event with custom St. Lawrence merchandise.
