William Shatner will "boldly go" to Indiana to watch upcoming solar eclipse

 

Hundreds of thousands of people are planning on heading to The Hoosier State to watch the Great American Eclipse on April 8. 

One famous skywatcher who will be in Indiana knows a thing or two about space and the sky: William Shatner. 

The actor and astronaut will be in Bloomington in two weeks as part of Indiana University's "Hoosier Cosmic Celebration." 

Even though experts know a lot about the science behind the solar eclipse, Shatner said this once-in-a-lifetime event should make us ponder what we don't know.

"The magic of the eclipse, the extraordinary events that all took in the heavenly bodies to cause this eclipse, should make us ponder the mystery of existence of our own existence of the existence of everything else, and how unified everything is," Shatner said.

Shatner told ABC57 he couldn't remember if he had seen a total solar eclipse before, but he's excited to see the event in Bloomington, which is set to be in totality for a whopping four minutes and two seconds. 

All eclipse viewers are hoping meteorologists aren't "trekking" a lot of clouds for the eclipse.

"What happens if it's cloudy? I don't know," Shatner joked. "It's like looking into the pit of a volcano saying, 'What can we do about that thing?' And there's nothing can be done."

With two weeks to go, the two major ensemble forecasts have mostly cloudy skies across Indiana during the peak of the eclipse. However, some individual forecast models depict a better picture for the event.

We'll continue to watch the trend as we get closer to the big day on April 8.