An animated short co-directed by UMBC’s Robin Corbet, senior research scientist in the Center for Space Sciences and Technology, and Laurence Arcadias, an animation professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, will screen at the Iron Mule Film Festival—a short comedy film fest—in New York City on October 7. Corbet and Arcadias will attend the screening and take questions from the audience about science, art, and how they can complement each other.
The playful and zany short film features animations representing the 2024 total eclipse. The soundtrack showcases a delightful and scientifically accurate track, “The Sun Song,” performed by The Chromatics, an a cappella group consisting primarily of NASA scientists.
A large group of astronomy researchers attending a meeting of the American Astronomical Society took part in a collaborative art and science workshop where they developed the animations just before viewing the eclipse.
The final product “uses the first film ever made of an eclipse, produced by magician Nevil Maskelyne in 1900, as a basis,” Corbet explains, “but the astronomers and artists added quite a few of their own wild embellishments.”
The eclipse workshop was a project of AstroAnimation, an ongoing collaboration led by Corbet and Arcadias. AstroAnimation brings together art students at MICA and NASA scientists to produce animations based on cutting-edge science. The eclipse film represents AstroAnimation’s effort to expand its impact beyond the classroom.