Clouds spoil the party
Thousands of people gathered Monday afternoon at COSI Columbus, eager to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse at 2:30 p.m.
But when they looked up, they couldn’t see it.
During the supposedly peak time for witnessing the phenomena, the view in central Ohio had in many areas become eclipsed itself by thick, gray clouds. That meant most people wearing protective eclipse glasses — to view the marvel without damaging their eyes — only saw darkness.
The eclipse was visible Downtown through breaks in the clouds before and after 2:30, so most of the thousands of people who stepped out of office towers saw a pretty good show.
Some people at COSI had waited in line for hours in the morning to get a pair of shades. Some didn’t need them: Alexander Rodriguez, 43, of Blacklick, learned a few tricks in his childhood when he watched an eclipse in Colombia, where he grew up.
While everyone looked up, he looked down through ordinary sunglasses coated with soot from a candle flame. His children, Daniel, 10, and Anna, 8, sprawled on their bellies in the grass and, wearing the sunglasses, took turns peering into an opaque black bowl full of water.
The water’s reflection produced a perfect image of the moon passing between the Earth and the sun. The family called to nearby bystanders so they could get a peek.
“I’ll never forget this — when the glasses didn’t work, we were the stars,” Daniel said.
The soot trick also works with ordinary glass, so Rodriguez brought a glass dish. Anna came equipped with a pin-hole projector built out of a Raisin Bran box.
Others in central Ohio used other ways to view the eclipse when cloud coverage got too thick for glasses, like the welders at Daifuku America Corp. in Reynoldsburg.
Just after 2 p.m., firstshift workers grabbed their welding shields and headed to the parking lot. They were met by second-shift workers who came in early for the show. One by one, they held up their shields as the eclipse neared its peak.
Daifuku ordered an extra 150 welding-shield glass plates for their employees to use during the eclipse, then kept them for future use.
Some of the employees were excited to witness the first solar eclipse to sweep coast to coast in 99 years; others were just happy to take a break from work.
“It’s about what I expected,” said Jeffrey Carl, a 35-year-old welder, as the moon created a thin crescent sun. “The idea of it happening is the coolest part.”
A partial eclipse was viewable with eclipse glasses from 1:20-2 p.m., before the clouds rolled in. At the eclipse’s peak, if you could see it, about 86 percent of the sun was covered.
To celebrate, COSI hosted viewing parties at 23 Columbus Metropolitan Library locations, eight Metro Parks, Easton Town Center and Land-Grant Brewing Co. In total, about 30,000 pairs of eclipse glasses were given away, COSI spokeswoman Jaclyn Reynolds said.
“This is one of those things where people forget their differences,” COSI President and CEO Frederic Bertley said. “People get together because this is an incredible natural wonder, to gaze up at the heavens, even if it’s just for 2 minutes, as a really cohesive group of human beings.
“That’s what this eclipse really means.”