NEW BERLIN — The New Berlin Cultural Center will be hosting a free learning opportunity for ages 8 and above at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 22, at the Cultural Center located in the Parish Hall of the St. Andrew's Church at 40 South Main Street.

Teenage astronomy educator and wildlife observer, Leo Greco, who is 14, is going make a presentation on the upcoming solar eclipse, which will take place at approximately 2:04 p.m. on April 8.

Greco's presentation will include photographs and slides. He will prepare his audience for the event with some astronomy basics. He will also include discussions about the recent eclipse he observed and documented in Utah and other celestial events.

The event will include edible treats based on the evening's celestial theme and created by the Cultural Center Director, Andreia Keller.

Village of New Berlin Mayor Peter Lennon said Greco speaks comfortably about astronomy to an audience of any level on this subject.

“I've listened to his discussions with both adults around the table and with the young participants in the Village's summer youth program for ages 8 to 12 and everyone came away with a better understanding of our universe,” he said.

Lennon said, “He's truly gifted and is very relatable.”

Greco said, “I've been interested in Astronomy pretty much my whole life. However, I believe in 2015 when I was about 6, we first got our telescope from The Monfort Academy and my dad brought me outside and showed me how it moves and how it looks.”

“I remember looking through it and it was incredible to see all the universe and then I watched some videos on youtube and that sparked my interest and it kept growing from there,” he said.

He said in the past few years, his interest skyrocket and roughly the past year is when he became very interested in astral photography, which is taking pictures of the night sky.

“I got so interested that I was wondering what's the next step and I've always had access to the telescope at the Montfort Academy, which is the school  I go to, so I was like why not take pictures because I'm seeing such amazing things, so why not capture that on digital,” Greco said.

“A solar eclipse is when the moons shadow casts onto the earth. A lunar eclipse is when the Earth’s shadow casts onto the moon,” said Greco. “The eclipse will be observable at about 98-percent occlusion in New Berlin and at 100-percent occlusion in areas about an hour north and west and is a once-in-a-generation experience.”

“Viewing the eclipse is actually the same as looking at the normal sun. People kind of make it seem that eclipses are more dangerous than a normal day, however that's not true. The thing about looking at an eclipse is that when it's partially covered, it still has the same intensity as a normal day,” said Greco.

“So what you're supposed to do is use a protective eye covering - like eclipse glasses, which normally block something on the magnitude of 99.99% of the light and only then is when you can actually look at the eclipse without damaging your eyes,” he said.

He said in New York, if you're right in the center of the path, totality lasts about three and a half minutes and if it's clear, you can actually see the sun’s corona, which is the sun’s atmosphere extending a few degrees out. Corona in latin means crown - the corona looks very spiky because of different filaments coming off of the sun going in different directions.

Greco added, “You are able to look at the eclipse once totality begins because once that begins, you're really not looking at the sun anymore, you're actually looking at the suns atmosphere.”

He described, If you can imagine using a magnifying glass onto a leaf or something, it smolders quickly. Our eyes have a lens in them, so looking at the sun is like putting a magnifying glass to the back of your retina and this can be very damaging to the eye, at any time.

“The reason looking at the normal sun doesn't damage our eyes is because our eyes are always moving, so it’s only for like a quick split second we actually look at the sun,” said Greco.

“Now if it's cloudy, there will be similar effects but it will get much darker, the wind, temperature, and humidity may change and you won't see the sun’s corona, it’s crown. However with clouds, it will get even darker than it normally would,” he said. “Street lights may turn on automatically and it will be very difficult to see. So you may have trouble seeing during the day for those three minutes during the total darkness of the eclipse.”

Greco explained Galileo would look at the sun almost every morning, he could because he lived in an area where it would be foggy and obviously when its foggy, sometimes the sun can be visible through that, it did however lead him to going blind.

However, through Galileo’s observations of the sun he learned about sun spots that led to many astronomers that logged sun spots and over time, different cycles were found and so many observations of the sun were conducted with one of the cycles proving to be an eleven year cycle.  This is when the sun is very active.

“This year the sun will be at its most active and hopefully during the eclipse a lot of that activity going on in its atmosphere will be viewed, once the sun is fully covered. The Corona should be brighter with solar providences, and helium hydrogen that will appear red to our eyes- like flares coming off of the sun,” he said.

Corona Mass Ejections (CMEs) are related to the suns Corona and would be visible during the eclipse if that did happen. Plasma that has ejected from the sun if there's a solar flare, is just an explosion of material off the surface of the sun. If it hits earth, then that causes Auroras because it's interacting with the atmosphere and hitting these particles; energizing them and releasing light.

“Recently I was able to see a" double eclipse" on Jupiter which is where two of Jupiters Moons were casting shadows on Jupiter at the same time. I did get a photograph of that and later when I looked at the photograph with my eye, I could see two slight specs of black on Jupiter,” Greco said.

“Second to that was viewing of the International Space Station, it's really incredible because you can see all of these little pieces of metal and so much intricate detail that you can somehow see from the ground, although its 400 kilometers away,” he added.

He said some people have a pretty decent telescope and can see the people on the Space Station taking their space walks. He said they look like little specs but he hasn’t managed to capture that yet.

He explained his favorite things to look at are things that are close to earth, for example, the international space station, the sun, and the planets.  He said he has also seen deep sky objects, which are the ones that are farther away, however he feels he’s not that good at taking images of those so he prefers to stick with the brighter and closer objects.


Greco’s father, Richard Greco, Jr. is President and Chairman of the Board at The Montfort Academy since its founding more than twenty years ago. He also teaches astronomy and astrophysics and italian cinema.

He said he recalls the same passion when he was a little boy and waking his father up in the middle of the night so many times and saying we have to go outside, we have to go outside and look out our telescope. His father had a really nice Nikon camera they would hook it up also.

“In that day, we didn't have computers to guide us, so it was all trial and error and everything,” he said. “I’ve always loved astronomy and in time the hobby and interest grew and grew. Teaching astronomy and astrophysics at the high school, I’m immersed in it everyday and love every second of it.”

“Now I have the greatest teaching assistant I could ever have, my son Leo,” he added. “He sets up the telescope, conducts all the viewings for the kids and does most everything, so i hope a little bit from me has rubbed off to him but the greatest joy and pride is that even for all of the times I've been around and studying, Leo has far surpassed me.”

Greco said this summer he hopes to get a good job somewhere and using some of his savings, he hopes to afford a 16 inch telescope, bigger than any telescope he has used before.

Greco will turn 15 years old next month and is the youngest of his five siblings. He helps with the  astronomy club and hosts viewings where they go up onto the roof and actually look through the telescope.

He said he hopes to study something related to astronomy or astrophysics in college and would like his dream job to be something in those fields like Space X or NASA or even as a researcher.

“That would be a dream to do what you really love and make money from that. And one day get a really, really, really, nice telescope at my house , wherever I get a house,” said Greco.

Lennon said this promises to be a great opportunity and is sure there will be students, parents, and grandparents looking for something fun to do during their free time and school's winter break.