. >> reporter: sleepy makanda, illinois, population 600, is bracing for a human invasion.l see why. d, you may have guessed, daytime darkness is coming. for the first time in 99 years, a total eclipse will cross coast to coast. it will run right over this town, and they've even painted a line to show its exact path. it leads to david dardis' art shop. inside, nearly everything from the walls to the wares have gone solar. >> this is a cross. i'w i'm going to call them solar crosses. >> reporter: the moon will cross in front of the sun on august 21st. the eclipse will raise from oregon to south carolina at it wt 500mph. covering a swath roughly 70 miles wide. day will turn into night, and 2e temperatures will drop as much as 25 degrees. today nasa kicked off an eclipse awareness campaign. >> we're going to be able to study it from the ground, from balloons, from space in a way that no one has ever done before. >> put these on and look up at the sun and actually see the sun. >> oh, wow, there it is. >> reporter: local physicist bob bayer is co-chair of the southern illinois u

makanda will be the place to be in exactly two months.eclipse can be viewed the longest, for more than two minutes. do you feel lucky? >> i do feel lucky. how can you not feel lucky? this is a lucky event. >> reporter: the solar eclipse's path runs straight through dave dardis' art studio and shom in makanda, illinois. and friends are coming out of the woodwork to get in on the action. >> they are wondering, is there room in your backyard? if they're good friends, i tell them bring your sleeping bag. there's room. >> reporter: tens of thousands of people are expected to, pour into the region. joe mcfarland calls himself the town's unofficial eclipse coordinator. >> what it means is we're nervous that we're going to have crowd control issues, traffic control issues. so we are trying to prepare for that. >> reporter: on august 21st the eclipse will race across the country at an average speed of about 1,500 miles an hour covering a swath of roughly 70 miles wide. day will turn into night and temperatures will drop as much as 25 degrees. >> a