The sun and the moon slow danced their way across the clear Southern California sky on Monday, April 8, for more than two hours performing a stunning astronomical show, complete with the requisite mood lighting and graceful movement.
From Orange County to the Inland Empire to L.A., the stars of this show didn’t go full-on ‘total’ tango, like they did across much of the United States. But for the thousands who gathered outdoors at local universities, schools, libraries, neighborhoods and parks in the region, the Great American Solar Eclipse, more of a foxtrot, was no less a show to behold.
A moment of a lifetime.
The sun and the moon were right on time, about 10:06 a.m. as they began their galactic show. The eclipse in the Southern California sky peaked around 11:12 a.m. and concluded at 12:22 p.m., at which point the moon and the sun took a bow and went back to being their normal selves.
• See photos: Total solar eclipse sweeps across North America
By then their delicate dance had darkened much of North America and left millions in awe. The eclipse’s “path of totality,” the band where the sun is completely blocked from view, cut diagonally across the continent, delighting U.S. viewers from Texas to Maine. All told, the totality passed over 13 U.S. states, and at least a partial eclipse will be visible from all 50, within eyeshot of 99% of the U.S. population.
Millions put on their special glasses, or looked through homemade pinhole cameras as things went dark across much of the U.S., and a little bit darker in Southern California, where we saw a sun nearly 50% covered by the moon.
In Southern California, that might not have been enough for some folks to notice anything at all. But the event was not lost on thousands of gazers, united by the sun-moon dance in the sky.
“It just felt like something you should witness at least once in your life,” said Madeleine Lees, a high school senior and a leader of Pasadena High School’s Astronomy…
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