Sacramento-area students, families safely stare at sky to see rare solar eclipse
SACRAMENTO - Students and staff at Garden Valley Elementary School in Sacramento spent their Monday marveling at the moon blocking out the sun.
Principal Tanya Praest said got the safety shades for everyone on campus and gathered students by grade level on the blacktop to safely stare up at the sky.
"Many of our students have never gotten this opportunity, or even were old enough to get to see an eclipse," Praest said.
The excitement was palpable as students and staff were in awe of what they saw through the blackout glasses.
Safety was a top priority for Praest and her students at the Twin Rivers Unified School District campus. That is why after viewing the eclipse, she had students spend the rest of the days indoors to avoid direct sun exposure without the safety shades.
In Sacramento, we only caught a glimpse of a partial eclipse, but other areas got to experience the whole sky going dark.
Fourth-grade teacher Carl Hardy took the solar eclipse as an opportunity to teach his students in the classroom.
"The moon is coming around here and the shadow is coming up right through here," Hardy said.
Hardy suspended a baseball on a string to represent the moon, a globe symbolized the sun and he had a large light shining on them both to create the shadow. He also opened up the floor to his students to share what they saw and ask any questions about the science.
Some students said the partial eclipse kind of resembled Pac-Man. It was a spectacular sungazing experience that the kids will not see again in the U.S. until 2044.
"They can do this again, but for right now they get to do this at school with their friends which makes this even more exciting," Praest said.
The Greater Sacramento region was not in the path of totality for Monday's eclipse, however, at its peak, around 34% of the sun was covered by the moon from our viewpoint.
Eclipse watch party in Davis
Monday's solar eclipse drew crowds across the Sacramento region despite the area being out of the path of totality.
Some of those star-gazers showed up for an organized watch party in Davis, west of Sacramento.
Families and friends from as far away as the Bay Area crowded around a telescope provided by the astronomy club outside the Exploreit Science Center in Davis.
Explorit education specialist Davie Mues spoke about the appeal of such a celebration surrounding the eclipse.
"Astronomy is not just something that is way off someplace else – something someone else does – but it can be part of our everyday lives and has personal meaning," Mues said.
David Terry and his daughter, Anika, were some of those spectators in attendance.
"[Mues] has been awesome, a lot of info in a short amount of time, so I have learned a lot already," David said.
"He has never seen an eclipse in his life," Anika said of her dad.
These two took their time to experience the exhibits and finally stared at the sun safely through clear skies.
