Updated at 3:49 p.m. ET

As the solar eclipse made its way from the West Coast to the East Coast, NASA shared its expertise live.

The space agency also had a pair of research planes flying with the eclipse. Anyone on land will experience, at best, about 2 1/2 minutes of total darkness, but the scientists on the planes will have more than 7 minutes.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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