Join us when New Jersey State Museum’s Dr. Jacob H. Hamer shares why solar eclipses have inspired fear and fascination for thousands of years. His discussion will include the following topics:

• History of man’s understanding of eclipses
• How people have been able to accurately predict eclipses for hundreds or even thousands of years
• Why eclipses happen (and why they don’t happen every month)
• Why eclipses are interesting to astronomers
• Overlap between solar eclipses and exoplanets
• And the upcoming April 8^th total solar eclipse

Dr. Jacob Hamer is the Assistant Curator of Planetarium Education at the New Jersey State Museum. Jacob received a B.A. in Physics and in Mathematics from the CUNY Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College in New York City in 2017. While he was at Hunter College, he carried out research on galaxy evolution at the American Museum of Natural History. Jacob received his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University in 2022. Jacob’s doctoral research focused on exoplanets.

**Attendees can receive solar eclipse viewing glasses for themselves at the conclusion of this event**

This program is offered by Margaret R. Grundy Memorial Library in support of the PA Forward | Pennsylvania Libraries initiative.  Libraries are key to powering progress and elevating the quality of life in PA by fueling the types of knowledge essential to success: Basic Literacy, Information Literacy, Civic and Social Literacy, Health Literacy, and Financial Literacy.

#PAForward #InformationLiteracy