Clouds hamper Ironwood eclipse viewing

From the dozens of telescopes set up at ASU’s Foster Field to the viewing party at the Stephens Central Library.

Leslie Goode, an organizer with the event, said the library received a grant for the glasses. “I don’t think we expected to have quite so many people, but we’re thrilled – we’re thrilled”.

There were activities for people of all ages.

Branch Manager Jennifer French tells KEEL News she saved a stack of the glasses for today’s viewing, but it was not almost enough.

The pinhole projectors were paper cutouts of the outline of West Virginia with a small hole in it that could be held skyward over your shoulder and you could see the shadowy crescent shape of the sun as the moon passed between it and the Earth projected onto a white sheet draped on the plaza through the pinhole. She explained the solar eclipse was being viewed, in various stages before and after totality, at that very moment across the nation, from OR to SC.

Although the weather didn’t work completely in our favor, viewers were able to get a quick look right at the start, before the clouds took over.

Today we can 3D print functioning organs and design eyeballs and prosthetics that enable those encumbered by blindness and missing limbs to see, and perform competitively in triathlons. “That was one of the major points of why we wanted to have this on-site party”.

“They’re excited. It’s kind of fun when science comes alive like that”, Delgado said.

“It was a much bigger success that we ever anticipated”, said the library’s assistant director, Abbi Dooley, who organized the event.

“I was googling Target, Walmart, and Best Buy and they were all sold out of solar eclipse glasses”, Ruiz said. The National Center for Interactive Learning at the Space Science Institute, with support from the Moore Foundation, Google, NASA, the Research Corporation, and NSF, distributed more than 2.1 million safe eclipse glasses to 7,000 locations around the country.

Hordes of people flocked to the northwestern, midland and southeast states were located in the area of 100 percent totality that nearly perfectly bisected the nation. “We’ll be at 99 percent”, says Oliver. As soon as the sunlight broke through the clouds, a loud applause and cheers broke out as the crowd hurried to put their glasses back on for a peak at the once in a lifetime view.

Some members of Boy Scout Troop 80 of North Lima also attended the program.

Seguin Library Youth Services Librarian Hannah Farmer chose to organize the events after learning that libraries could apply for solar eclipse viewing glasses.