Eyes on the sky as solar excitement eclipses all else

Special viewing glasses, telescopes equipped with solar filters, welder’s goggles, pinhole cameras, even colanders – folks around Modesto used just about every method under the sun to watch Monday morning’s solar eclipse.

Modesto Junior College drew a crowd estimated at more than 500 people to the Great Valley Museum on its west campus. There, they lined up to look through two telescopes as the eclipse occurred locally between 9:02 and 11:40 a.m.

“We were expecting a couple of hundred people but we got probably well over 500,” said astronomy instructor Daniel Chase, manning one of the big telescopes. The eclipse has received so much news coverage in recent weeks that most adults who came out knew what to expect.

“Lot of kids came out and asked a lot of good questions,” he added. Students at Big Valley Christian School in Modesto, for example, were given time away from school to view the eclipse with their families, a student said.

One viewer asked Chase about the “little specks” she could see on the sun’s surface during the eclipse. He explained the dark areas are sunspots – most of them larger than Earth.

As they waited in line, people shared viewing glasses, cereal-box pinhole viewers and other tools for eclipse-gazing. With the sun behind them, some used colanders to project the eclipse’s shadow on sidewalks. Friends took friends’ pictures as they stood in front of trees, with smatterings of sunlight casting the image of the eclipse on their shirts.

In Turlock, science teacher Ryan Hollister arranged for a science radio show to donate eclipse glasses for nearly 2,500 students, who gathered in Joe Debley Stadium to watch it.

The National Weather Service office in Sacramento posted on Facebook that the temperature in the capital dropped 4 degrees during the eclipse. It asked, “Did you notice cooler temperatures while you were outside watching?”

MJC student Gabriela Diaz said she definitely noted that it got a bit cooler – and darker – as the moon eclipsed 75 percent of the sun. The maximum effect locally was at 10:17 a.m.

At elementary, middle and high schools, students who’ve been learning about the eclipse got to step outside to take a look through protective glasses. “We talked about it all last week,” said 11-year-old Gracie Kallstrom, a sixth-grader at McParland Elementary in Manteca went to the MJC West Campus with her parents and 7-year-old sister, Ella, to watch the eclipse.

This story was originally published August 21, 2017 at 1:22 PM with the headline "Eyes on the sky as solar excitement eclipses all else."