Hilton Head High grad plans to film shadow of the eclipse passing over Charleston Monday

Charleston is right in the line of totality for Monday’s solar eclipse and Robert Moody, a 2013 graduate of Hilton Head Island High School, and the rest of his team from College of Charleston plan to record its shadow passing over the city.

The team will launch weather balloons with cameras that will film and record the event. The footage will be live streamed and the public can watch it at eclipse2017.nasa.gov.

Moody, who is a computer science major at College of Charleston, is working as the team’s technician and is responsible for making sure that all of the equipment is running correctly and is up to date. The other members of his team include geology majors, one marine biology major and an exercise science major.

The project is made possible by the South Carolina Space Grant Consortium and the project is headed up by a team at Montana State University.

Moody and his team plan to release the weather balloons from a boat about six miles off of the shore of Charleston, S.C. just before the eclipse, at around 1:45 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017.

If all goes as planned, the balloons will rise to somewhere between 1000 and 2000 feet before popping and heading back to earth.

There are 54 teams across the country, in the line of totality, that will also be releasing balloons.

Moody has been a part of the team for about five months now, but the team has been working towards this event for almost two years.

“It’s almost really releasing for me, I’ve been really stressed,” Moody said about his feelings about it all coming to an end. “Everytime I get things working, they will release another update. I can’t wait to get things up in the air.”

This story was originally published August 19, 2017 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Hilton Head High grad plans to film shadow of the eclipse passing over Charleston Monday."