Across Greater Lowell, total eclipse was a sunny de-light (SLIDESHOW)


WESTFORD — “Oh man,” a young girl, dark cardboard glasses hanging from her face, cried out in a crowded field. “It’s almost gone!”

Such was the scene at the MIT Wallace Observatory in Westford, which hosted close to 200 people, many of them young children, for a viewing of Monday’s “Great American Eclipse.”

In much of Greater Lowell, only about two-thirds of the sun was covered at the eclipse’s peak, meaning the visible effects could only be noticed with special glasses or with homemade pinhole projectors.

But regardless, the eclipse generated months of hype and widespread excitement. Thousands of people sought limited spots at the observatory’s event, while hundreds flocked to local libraries for similar happenings.

“It was pretty incredible,” said 14-year-old Owen Hurlbut Lesk, who traveled with his family from Boxboro to Westford for the MIT event. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

After all, the day was historic. Total solar eclipses, when the moon’s orbit passes directly in front of the sun and appears to block it out entirely when viewed from a small portion inside the shadow, are not infrequent, occurring roughly every 18 months somewhere on the globe.

But “somewhere on the globe” is a massive range. Only a handful of total eclipses have grazed the United States in recent decades, and it had been 99 years since a total eclipse stretched from coast to coast.

On Monday, a 70-mile-wide path of totality raced from Oregon to South Carolina in about 90 minutes, plunging onlookers — many of whom trekked from distant corners of the country, eagerly chasing a fleeting and magnificent celestial event — into night-like darkness for two minutes or so at the peak.

The sudden totality in those areas produced surreal scenes. Temperatures suddenly dropped, crickets began chirping and stars became visible for a brief moment in the middle of the afternoon. Fittingly, singer Bonnie Tyler performed her 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean while the solar eclipse unfolded.

Even the partial eclipse visible in most of the United States outside the path of totality was a noteworthy event. Much of New England had not encountered one since 1994 before Monday.

Libraries ran out of the safety glasses needed to look directly at the eclipse in a matter of days. The Wallace Observatory’s event filled up weeks ahead of time.

“This is our biggest outreach event we’ve ever done,” said Tim Brothers, observatory manager at Wallace.

Onlookers spread out across the field at the observatory, many in lawn chairs or on towels as if out for a day in the park. The air remained energetic for most of the day, with children buzzing around narrating what they saw.

One attendee, 24-year-old Fabian Hoehne, decided to visit a friend of his who studies at MIT just so he could view the eclipse. When it became difficult to find lodging in the path of totality, they decided to head up to Westford.

“We were thinking of going to Nashville (Tennessee), but there was no place to stay,” Hoehne said.

Wallace officials gave out the cardboard safety glasses necessary to view the sun safely. The lenses blocked out all other light, rendering the entire sky black except for the small dot of the sun that, as the moon crept across, slowly took the shape of a crescent.

The observatory set up other viewing methods, too. A camera in the main tower sent a visual live-feed, complemented by a data visualization of the ionosphere from MIT’s nearby Haystack Observatory, to an air-conditioned building open to the public. Dozens of people lined up for a turn to look at the sun through a properly filtered telescope in one building researchers affectionately call “the shed.” Some used homemade pinhole projectors, constructed out of boxes and paper plates, to cast a small image of the obscured sun onto a surface so it could be seen without the glasses.

Greg Hurlburt of Boxboro spent an hour and a half taping together several boxes to make a projector that was roughly the size of a small child — worth it, he said, to help expose his children to the event.

“It’s a real rush job, but you can see (the eclipse) really well,” he said. “This is a first one for the kids.”

(Staff of The Sun set up their own pinhole projector built out of a long cardboard tube, which did create a faint albeit accurate image of the crescent-shaped sun. It was quickly commandeered by curious children.)

The next total eclipse to hit the United States is not all that far off. It will occur on April 8, 2024, and the path of totality will run as close as northern Vermont.

Mark your calendars.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisLisinski.