Many Abandon Routines to See Sun’s Disappearing Act

For nearly an hour and a half Thursday, Californians turned off the freeways, climbed out of cars, emerged from concrete and steel office buildings and generally broke with their daily routines to gaze at a fading star.

About 400 stargazers in Ventura County packed the tiny Moorpark College observatory and amphitheater to witness the eclipse of the sun while another capacity crowd of 3,000 brought telescopes, cameras and picnic lunches to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

They were among the millions of people from Ventura County to the Mexican border who took time out to watch as the moon moved between the earth and the sun in one of the most spectacular solar eclipses of the century.

The eclipse blackened a 160-mile-wide path that ran 9,320 miles from the western Pacific to near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Lasting nearly seven minutes at its peak, it was the longest total eclipse since one over Africa’s Sahara Desert in 1973, and will be the longest for the next 141 years.

In Ventura County, Moorpark College astronomy instructor Dennis Leatart projected the sun’s image on a viewing screen at the Moorpark observatory.

The star’s diminishing size was projected to those who had crowded into the 120-seat amphitheater.

“It was really spectacular,” he said.

Heavy fog obscured the view of the eclipse from coastal areas in Ventura and Oxnard, but many county residents used back-yard telescopes and homemade kits to catch a glimpse of the sun as it shrank.

At 10:12 a.m., when the eclipse began, the sun was a full glowing sphere. By 11:28 a.m., it was a small crescent, regaining its normal size at 12:47 p.m.

Adults and children in Moorpark stood in a line that stretched 100 people back for a look through a powerful telescope that opened their eyes to the center of the solar system about 93 million miles away.

“We’re interested in what’s going on in our planet,” said Sara Stutes, 15, of Simi Valley. “It makes you realize where we’re sitting in the universe.”

Ian Hendricks, a 12-year-old from Thousand Oaks, watched the eclipse from his own viewing box that his father helped him fashion the night before.

“I knew there would be a long line at the telescope,” he said.

In Baja California and Hawaii, the eclipse was total, changing day into night.

But in Ventura County, maximum coverage was 70%, Leatart said.

In Moorpark, as the eclipse neared its apex, the air cooled by about 6 degrees. Leatart interrupted the buzz of conversation and children at play to prepare the crowd for the event that they had come to witness.

“If we can all be very quiet, we may be able to hear the birds and crickets who have been tricked into thinking it’s almost night,” he said.

But the silence was momentary and the crowd’s din drowned out any evening song that might have been.

“I’m kind of disappointed because I expected something more like a movie where no one would talk or take their eyes off the screen,” said Sara Gelabert, 11, of Simi Valley.

But Moorpark astronomy student Karen Hart, who watched the event through a Celestron telescope, found what she had come after.

“The universe is bigger than we realize,” she said, adjusting the telescopic lens for the best view. “Everybody wants to know where we come from, and this can help tell us.”

Children of all ages were the largest part of the audience, but parents and adult astronomy buffs were also out.

Cathy Ferro of Ojai said she brought her two children and a friend to the observatory for the eclipse to teach them a little something about science.

“I think it’s better for their brains than watching Terminator II or Robocop II,” she said as they waited for a turn at the telescope.

“This is an event of a lifetime.”

In Los Angeles, the two roads leading to the Griffith Observatory were closed at 9:38 a.m. when all parking spaces were filled.

“It’s great!” exclaimed Griffith Observatory astronomer John Mosley. “The high clouds and fog don’t matter. We were worried about not being able to see it at all.”

One of the many who gathered in the overlooks along the Angeles Crest National Highway to view the eclipse above the smog and haze of Los Angeles was Wayne Williams, 24, former graduate student in religious studies and mythology.

The eclipse, Williams said, was an event so far beyond human control that it “focuses attention on the universe, and the ultimate questions of our existence.”

Ronald Baum and Vilma Vega picked the darkest moment of the day to exchange vows.

At precisely 11:30 a.m., the Angeleno Heights couple said their “I do’s” under the shadow of the moon.

“I wanted to make it a cosmic coupling,” explained Baum after the couple posed for photos on the steps of the downtown County Courthouse.

“I call her affectionately ‘Moon,’ so if I’m ‘Apollo,’ she’s eclipsing me all the time.”

To avoid injuries, many people watched the eclipse through Mylar glasses, hand-held filters or homemade cardboard pinhole viewing boxes.

Some were more inventive.

At UCLA, doctors and nurses crowded on the lawns to peer at the sky through developed X-rays.

At Mt. Wilson Observatory, Mike Klien, 27, an unemployed particle physicist from Pasadena, held up a chocolate chip cookie with a bite that was taken out to match the crescent of overlap at 11:15 a.m.

In Lancaster, about half a dozen students and teachers at the Page Beauty School stood on the sidewalk and watched with a pair of viewers made from old hair roller boxes and aluminum foil.

Afterward, some eclipse watchers wondered whether the devices had provided sufficient protection for their eyes.

Los Angeles’ largest medical emergency rooms, however, reported no cases of unusual eye injuries Thursday.