Plenty of events in Bay Area about solar spectacle
Real eclipse fanatics will have left the Bay Area for prime watching areas in points north and east but, for those who remain, the 156-minute solar spectacle will be playing — safely — at science museums, libraries and countless other public places under the sun.
There will be eclipse lectures, eclipse safety telescopes, eclipse story time, eclipse chamber music, eclipse viewing parties, eclipse coffee cup holders and even eclipse-related pointers on how to save energy.
The partial eclipse begins in the Bay Area at 9:01 a.m. on Monday and ends at 11:37 a.m. About halfway through, 76 percent of the sun will be covered by the shadow of the moon.
The eclipse will only be “total” for about two minutes, within a 70-mile-wide swath running from Oregon to South Carolina. The rest of the nation, like the Bay Area, will experience a partial eclipse — which, astronomers say, is still worth experiencing.
HERE’S WHERE TO DO IT:
The Exploratorium science museum at Pier 15 in San Francisco will conduct eclipse viewing on the plaza in front of the building. Inside the museum, the Kronos string quartet will perform eclipse-inspired chamber music, and live images of the total eclipse as seen in Oregon and Wyoming will be projected onto viewing screens.
Chabot Space & Science Center in the Oakland hills will invite the public to peek at the eclipse through its 8-inch telescope (be prepared to wait in line, the center says) and to make pinhole eclipse viewers from sheets of cardboard. There will be lectures and commentary and a live feed from NASA.
Astronomers at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park will answer questions and provide eclipse viewing equipment and a live video feed of the total eclipse.
Lawrence Hall of Science, after viewing the real eclipse on the front plaza, the public is invited inside the hall at 1 Centennial Drive, Berkeley, for a special eclipse planetarium show.
Castro Valley Library will hand out free eclipse glasses prior to viewing parties at 3600 Norbridge Ave. and at the Oakland Main Library at 125 14th St. The experts in Oakland will also hand out free pinhole viewers, which is a fancy term for a tiny hole in a piece of paper.
The Alameda Free Library at 1550 Oak St., which normally opens on Mondays at noon, is throwing open its community room beginning at 9 a.m. for live eclipse streaming from NASA, since rescheduling the eclipse to conform to library hours was not an option. More eclipse watching will take place in the library parking lot.
Ortega Branch Library will hold an eclipse story time for toddlers at 3223 Ortega St. in San Francisco and, in the middle, the librarians will put down their books and take children outside to see how the eclipse is going.
The State Capitol in Sacramento will hand out free eclipse glasses that double as coffee cup holders. An Assembly member will talk about saving energy.