There was no better excuse for a party. Sunshine, blue skies, temperatures in the mid-60s, and a natural phenomenon that wasn’t going to happen again for 20 years.
Well more than 200 people gathered Monday morning in Laguna Woods to sit in the grass, mingle with friends and neighbors, munch on goodies, and look up to the sky to see the moon making a painfully slow path across the bottom half of the sun.
Across the nation, it was dubbed the “Great American Eclipse,” and tens of millions converged on a swath from Mexico to Maine that was the path of a total solar eclipse, with the moon completely blocking the face of the sun.
California didn’t get the full deal: The moon ate up roughly 50 percent of the sun at maximum coverage just after 11 a.m.
“It looks like a croissant,” Laguna Woods resident Lucy Bilinski exclaimed when the dark orb of the moon first sidled into the golden-haloed sphere of the sun.
Peering through special eclipse glasses, Muriel Ash opined, “It reminds me of the Apple logo.”
The viewing party was the brainchild of Joe Camera, president of the Astronomy Club. His goal, he said, was to bring the event close to home for residents and to make it a community affair. The club even provided nearly 200 eclipse glasses for free.
“To share this unique experience with the community, to experience it with friends and neighbors is the special part,” Camera said.
The club’s mission is to study celestial objects and astronomical phenomena through modern technology and techniques.
That’s just why Ash became a member. “I joined to listen and stretch (my mind) and learn things that I did not know before,” she said.
“I am so into astronomy,” said Helene Siegel. “The sun is 400 times bigger than the moon and its distance from Earth so much larger – amazing.”
But for many people it was the social aspect of the gathering they enjoyed.
Ruth Reyes liked “the excitement of a phenomenon that doesn’t happen very often….
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