Light clouds on Monday, April 8, mostly dissipated in time for eclipse watchers throughout Greenbelt to clearly view the first eclipse in the area since 2017. This partial solar eclipse – with the moon blocking 89 percent of the sun, according to the Astronomical Society of Greenbelt (ASG) webpage – brought smiles and a sense of wonder to those who looked at the phenomenon through special glasses.
Hundreds showed up for festive viewing at the City of Greenbelt Observatory on Northway. Organizers handed out more than 170 pairs of eclipse glasses to the gathering crowd, according to ASG’s Carol Robertson. Adults lounged in beach chairs or sprawled in the grass, while children ran among them waving colanders and making crescent-shaped shadows on the ground. A constant stream of adults and children waited in line to see the eclipse progress through the telescope.
The telescope’s moving image was captured for convenient viewing on a large laptop screen at the base of the observatory while visitors cheerfully waited in line, heads tipped upward. The highlight, a peek up into the
observatory, revealed busy astronomers at work below a bright arc of blue sky sparkling with little clouds. At the adjacent ballfield, bleachers filled and provided seating for the season’s most unusual swing-and-a-miss. Everywhere were oohs and aahs, amateur astronomical explanations and shared memories of past eclipses.
Other people gathered in smaller groups throughout Greenbelt, some of them observed by News Review staff outside the newspaper’s office in the Community Center as they alternated between viewing the stages of the eclipse and working on this week’s issue of the paper.