Vermont science museum prepares for its eclipse 'Super Bowl'

One of the many places in northern New England where people will get to see the solar eclipse in its totality Monday is Burlington, Vermont.

It'll be enveloped in dusky darkness for a few minutes as the moon completely blocks out the sun starting at 3:26 p.m.

There's a science and nature museum in Burlington with big plans for the eclipse. It's called ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, and it's expecting 1,500 visitors Monday. Staff started planning for the event a year ago.

The center will run a live stream of the eclipse. Setting that up took a lot of trial, error and equipment tests, according to Nina Ridhibhinyo, who heads ECHO's education programs.

"We prototyped [the live stream set-up] in October during the partial eclipse that happened here to ... figure out the right scope for capturing that sun and making sure the whole thing was in view and that we would capture that beautiful corona during totality," Ridhibhinyo told WBUR's All Things Considered host Lisa Mullins.

The center is partnering with an amateur astronomers' group to put on the event.

ECHO will also have educational exhibits in the neighboring waterfront park, sun spotters to project the image of the eclipse and lots of eclipse eyewear — from traditional eclipse glasses to viewers the museum's staff fashioned out of leftover pandemic face shields they covered with solar filter material.

Staff sent out 50 eclipse pop-up exhibit kits to libraries and schools, complete with binoculars fitted with solar filters, sun spotters and posters.

"The eclipse is our Super Bowl, one of the biggest public engagements in science I'll probably experience in my life," Ridhibhinyo said. "So it's been really meaningful to me to be able to have so many people interested in this scientific event and have a scientific event that isn't just about science, and I think it never is. But it really is a really spiritual event for a lot of people. And I think there's a lot of connection there."