Solar eclipse awes Polk County, nation
Locals gather at a solar eclipse event hosted by the Cedartown Library.
The stars came out in the middle of the day, zoo animals ran in agitated circles, crickets chirped, birds fell silent and a chilly darkness settled upon the land when a celestial event gave the U.S. witnessed its first fullblown, coast-to-coast solar eclipse since World War I.
Millions of Americans gazed in wonder at the cosmic spectacle, with the best seats along the so-called path of totality that raced 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) across the continent from Oregon to South Carolina.
Polk County was no different, and all across the area local residents stepped out in the middle of the afternoon to experience the eclipse, even though this part of Northwest Georgia didn’t get full darkness as the moon passed in front of the sun.
Both libraries hosted events to help educate the public both young and old about how a solar eclipse works, and to aid in the viewing on Aug. 20.
The Rockmart Public Library hosted a viewing event for the first eclipse over North America in decades. Before the eclipse the library hosted a live viewing party where one could watch the NASA live feed of the solar eclipse and also hear some interesting information about the eclipse.
For instance, library officials provide information explaining how this eclipse was predicted down to seconds accurate on when it would arrive in every state. Library officials also set a table up for kids to make their own solar eclipse pin hole viewers with household objects.
For a lot of the viewers, this was the first time any had the chance of witnessing the phenomenon, an experience to some that seemed as if it were supernatural event that occurred.
“This was my f i rst eclipse that I remember experiencing in my life, the coolest part of whole thing was when I looked through the leaves and they was shaped like crescent moons,” said Timothy James Cusack. “I didn’t expect it to get so dark when it passed either; it got even weirder when the crickets started to chirp. But overall it was a terrific experience, and I can not wait until the next one so I can show this to my kids in the future.”
Rockmart Library director Sharon Cleveland helped organize the event at the library, and was just as excited to see her second solar eclipse in her life since she missed the first opportunity during her school days.
“In high school, that was back in the 1980’s, I distinctively remember being in my foreign language and they pulled the blinds down so that no one in the room would be blinded by the eclipse.” said Cleveland.
That caution at local schools in Polk County persisted, with the windows covered up and students kept in the dark for the event. They were able to watch the eclipse through a livestream in the classroom, and at Northside Elementary in Cedartown they also used it as an educational opportunity to teach astronomy and scientific principles in a variety of fields.
Over at the Cedartown Library, their event included handing out of a limited number of glasses, showing people how to use homemade solar eclipse viewers and more.
It took 90 minutes for the shadow of the moon to travel across the country. Along that path, the moon blotted out the midday sun for about two wondrous minutes at any one place, eliciting oohs, aahs, whoops and shouts from people gathered in stadiums, parks and backyards.
It was, by all accounts, the most- observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, documented by satellites and high- altitude balloons and watched on Earth through telescopes, cameras and cardboard-frame protective eyeglasses.
In Boise, Idaho, where the sun was more than 99 percent blocked, the street lights flicked on briefly, while in Nashville, Tennessee, people craned their necks at the sky and knocked back longneck beers at Nudie’s Honky Tonk bar. Passengers aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean watched it unfold as Bonnie Tyler sang her 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
Several minor- league baseball teams — one of them, the Columbia Fireflies, outfitted for the day in glow-in-the-dark jerseys — briefly suspended play.
At the White House, despite all the warnings from experts about the risk of eye damage, President Donald Trump took off his eclipse glasses and looked directly at the sun.
The path of totality, where the sun was 100 percent obscured by the moon, was just 60 to 70 miles wide. But the rest of North America was treated to a partial eclipse, as were Central America and the upper reaches of South America.
Skies were clear along most of the route, to the relief of those who feared cloud cover would spoil the moment.
“Oh, God, oh, t hat was amazing,” said Joe Dellinger, a Houston man who set up a telescope on the Capitol lawn in Jefferson City, Missouri. “That was better than any photo.”
For the youngest observers, it seemed like magic.
“It’s really, really, really, really awesome,” said 9- year- old Cami Smith as she gazed at the fully eclipsed sun in Beverly Beach, Oregon.
NASA reported 4.4 million people were watching its TV coverage midway t hrough the eclipse, the biggest livestream event in the space agency’s history.
“It can be religious. It makes you feel insignificant, like you’re just a speck in the whole scheme of things,” said veteran eclipse-watcher Mike O’Leary of San Diego, who set up his camera along with among hundreds of other amateur astronomers in Casper, Wyoming.
John Hays drove up from Bishop, California, for the total eclipse in Salem, Oregon, and said the experience will stay with him forever.
“That silvery ring is so hypnotic and mesmerizing, it does remind you of wizardry or like magic,” he said.
More than one parent was amazed to see teenagers actually look up from their cellphones.
Patrick Schueck, a construction company president from Little Rock, Arkansas, brought his 10-year-old twin daughters Ava and Hayden to Bald Knob Cross of Peace in Alto Pass, Illinois, a more than 100-foot cross atop a mountain. Schueck said at first his girls weren’t very interested in the eclipse. One sat looking at her iPhone.
“Quickly that changed,” he said. “It went from them being aloof to being in total amazement.” Schueck called i t a chance to “do something with my daughters that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.”
Astronomers, too, were giddy with excitement.
NASA solar physicist Alex Young said the last time earthlings had a connection like this to the heavens was during man’s first flight to the moon, on Apollo 8 in 1968. The first, famous Earthrise photo came from that mission and, like this eclipse, showed us “we are part of something bigger.”
NASA’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, watched with delight from a plane flying over the Oregon coast and joked about the space-agency official next to him, “I’m about to fight this man for a window seat.”
Hoping to learn more about the sun’s composition and the mysterious solar wind, NASA and other scientists watched and analyzed it all from the ground and the sky, including aboard the International Space Station.
Citizen scientists monitored animal and plant behavior as day turned into twilight. About 7,000 people streamed into the Nashville Zoo just to see the animals’ reaction and noticed how they got noisier at it got darker.
The giraffes started running around crazily in circles when darkness f ell, and t he f l amingos huddled together, though zookeepers aid it wasn’t clear whether it was the eclipse or the noisy, cheering crowd that spooked them.
“I didn’t expect to get so emotionally caught up with it. I literally had chill bumps,” said zoo volunteer Stephan Foust.
In Charleston, South Carolina, the eclipse’s last stop in the U.S., college junior Allie Stern, 20, said: “It was amazing. It looked like a banana peel, like a glowing banana peel which is kind of hard to describe and imagine but it was super cool.”
After the celestial spectacle, eclipse-watchers heading home in Tennessee and Wyoming spent hours stuck in traffic jams. In Kentucky, two women watching the eclipse while standing on a sidewalk were struck by a car, and one has died, authorities said.
The Earth, moon and sun line up perfectly every one to three years, briefly turning day into night for a sliver of the planet. But these sights normally are in no man’s land, like the vast Pacific or Earth’s poles. This is the first eclipse of the social media era to pass through such a heavily populated area.
The last coast-to-coast total eclipse in the U.S. was in 1918, when Woodrow Wilson was president. The last total solar eclipse in the U.S. was in 1979, but only five states in the Northwest experienced total darkness. The next total eclipse in the U.S. will be in 2024. The next coast-to-coast one will not be until 2045.