Partial eclipse enough for many in state

Temperatures drop, crickets awaken as onlookers enjoy rare phenomenon

People watch the solar eclipse Monday from Petit Jean State Park near Morrilton. About 100 people attended the eclipse watch party atop Petit Jean Mountain.
People watch the solar eclipse Monday from Petit Jean State Park near Morrilton. About 100 people attended the eclipse watch party atop Petit Jean Mountain.

The sky became dimmer, temperatures dropped by 5 degrees, confused crickets chirped briefly and thousands of Arkansans stopped what they were doing and stared skyward Monday.

The Great American Eclipse of 2017 finally arrived after months of anticipation, and for the most part the skies behaved in Arkansas, offering a clear view of the partial solar eclipse. But in Piggott, where 97 percent of the sun was obscured by the moon, clouds hindered viewers who gathered at the Clay County Courthouse to watch the phenomenon.

"It did get darker," said Brande Boyd, a Clay County deputy clerk who stood with 30 or so people outside the courthouse from noon to about 1:30 p.m. to watch the eclipse. "You could see it changing through the [protective] glasses. Clouds came and went. When it was at its totality, clouds covered the sun."

Boyd said she noticed that crickets began chirping momentarily just as the sun was covered the most at 1:22 p.m.

"They came out for a minute and then they went back to sleep," she said.

It was the first time since 1918 that a total eclipse traversed the continental United States. A total eclipse that coursed through western Washington and into Alberta, Canada, on Feb. 26, 1979, was the last to be seen on U.S. soil.

The path of totality of the moon's shadow first was seen Monday morning in Oregon and traveled an average of 1,800 miles per hour across 12 states before leaving the East Coast at Charleston, S.C., in the afternoon.

Those in northeast Arkansas saw more of the sun obscured than residents farther south in the state. Jonesboro viewers watched as the moon blotted out 95 percent of the sun. In Texarkana, 81 percent of the sun was covered.

"We had good weather across the state for this," said meteorologist Lance Pyle of the National Weather Service in North Little Rock. "We're glad. We had a lot of inquires about the forecast leading up to this."

Scores of children at the International Studies Magnet School in Jonesboro put on protective glasses or used homemade pinhole viewers and stood on the school's playground to watch the eclipse. The 489 students who attend the grade school had prepared for the eclipse in the week since school opened Aug. 14.

Styrofoam balls painted like the earth and attached to balls of tinfoil representing the moon lined a hallway in the school, illustrating for visitors how solar eclipses occur.

Partial eclipse in central Arkansas

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Photos by John Sykes

Principal Arthur Jackson took first- and second-graders out last week to practice using the solar glasses, but had some difficulties.

"We were expecting them to follow our instructions to a T on the fifth day of class," he said Monday.

The school decided to play it safe and allow parents of first- and second-graders to go to the school and watch the eclipse with their children, Jackson said.

"At first I was scared," said Kale Burch, 6, a first-grader, watching the eclipse through glasses. "The sun looks like an orange with a bite in it."

The temperature in Jonesboro was 91 degrees at 11:55 a.m., Pyle said. At 1:20 p.m., at the eclipse's maximum, it had dropped to 86 degrees.

The same 5-degree temperature variations were recorded in North Little Rock during the eclipse, Pyle said.

At 1:11 p.m., about 10 minutes from the moon's maximum coverage of the sun in Jonesboro, a cool wind picked up, fluttering the row of flags at the school's entrance.

"It's getting darker," children cried out.

An orange-tinged dusk appeared, noticeably muting shadows.

"This is the greatest day of my life," third-grade student Zander Carter, 9, exclaimed. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

When someone reminded him that another solar eclipse is set to occur in Arkansas on April 8, 2024, Zander amended himself.

"This is a twice-in-lifetime experience," he said.

Ainsley Bonner, 10, a fifth-grader, and her brother, Beckett Bonner, 6, a first-grader, had homemade pinhole cameras to view the eclipse.

Both cameras were made from cereal boxes, but they indicated the difference between little boys and little girls. Beckett's was a battered Kroger-brand Crispy Rice box. Ainsley covered her cereal box in violet construction paper and glued a large blue "A" on both sides.

"I decorated mine," she said, proudly.

By 1:21 p.m., the eclipse reached its peak. Less than two minutes later, the moon moved away from the sun and children returned to their classes.

In Little Rock, onlookers paraded through the River Market District with their eyes to the heavens as Monday's eclipse touched off a torrent of attention and intrigue.

Crescent-shaped glimmers of light shined through a vine-covered walkway along the riverfront, changing in size as the eclipse neared its crest.

Some inside the walking path had merely sought shelter from the midday rays of light, while others were mesmerized by the shapes speckled onto much of the concrete sidewalk.

As the eclipse reached its peak, a group of people haphazardly gathered along the banks of the Arkansas River turned their eyes southward toward a dimmed sky. Shouts of "This is so cool" and "Whoa" could be heard among a crowd of school-aged children and their families at the climactic moment.

"I just hope that this kind of event inspires people to be interested in science," said Kathleen Gilbert, 65, of Little Rock, a longtime astronomy enthusiast who had crafted her own viewing box.

In Conway, the University of Central Arkansas opened its small observatory to visitors who could look through a filter-protected telescope. The line leading to the viewing was never too long as visitors had to climb narrow stairs to reach the top.

With only a small table-top fan cooling the observatory, the heat was sweltering at first. By the time the moon covered most of the sun at about 1:20 p.m., though, the tiny room was much cooler.

Gideon Meredith, 5, of Conway, peered through the telescope.

"You'll see a bite out of it," someone told Gideon as he looked at the sun.

"Yeah, a big bite," he replied.

Aaron Waggoner, 6, of Conway, compared the view to "someone eating a cookie."

Scott Austin, associate professor of physics and astronomy and director of UCA's separate planetarium, helped visitors observe the eclipse.

"It's smiling at you now," he told another youngster as the moon blotted all but a sliver of the sun.

Brandon Faith, a UCA freshman from El Dorado, said he was interested in astronomy, so he went to the observatory.

"I've never seen something like this," he said.

Cloud coverage was no issue atop Petit Jean Mountain at Petit Jean State Park.

The sun's rays baked roughly 100 perspiring attendees who were surprised to find a slight reprieve from the heat as the blotted sun eerily darkened the mountaintop.

It was a gathering mostly of central Arkansans along with P. Clay Sherrod, who runs the independent Arkansas Sky Observatories and brought out two telescopes with fitted solar filters.

"They'll remember this," Sherrod said, gesturing widely to the dozens of children running through the park ground.

"If some kid in some school district, by some executive decision, is forced to stay inside and watch a live feed from NASA on a TV, an indirect exposure has very little lasting effect compared to actually coming out here," he said.

The spectacle was having an awe-striking effect on everyone, no matter their age, said Pam Avaltroni, a recently retired Veterans Affairs nurse who lives in Conway.

"This gives people the opportunity to see that there's something beyond them," she said. "It's beautifully therapeutic. Especially lately, with all the other incidents that have been going on in our country."

"Just look at the group around here," Avaltroni said. "People are talking to each other. People are smiling. There are elderly, there are young kids, but everybody seems to be able to share this common experience."

Retired welder Don Lienhart of Russellville held aloft his welding helmet and a camera as he struggled to take a clear picture of the crescent sun.

Lienhart had spent 65 years on the West Coast helping to build guidance systems that became part of larger projects, such as the Mars Rover, he said. So his occasional brush with outer-orbit projects in his career elicited a special fascination in Monday's spectacle.

When it was all over, Sherrod broke down his telescope equipment seemingly as quickly as he'd set it up on Petit Jean Mountain, but there was no anticlimatic feeling after the eclipse had passed.

Sherrod is already looking forward to the 2024 eclipse, which will treat Arkansans to total darkness.

"It will be the eclipse of the century, I don't care what anybody says," he said. "We're expecting 2 to 3 million people in Arkansas. It will be the biggest people and money draw the state has ever experienced, or ever will."

photo

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Becky Rogers watches the solar eclipse at its peak Monday from the front walkway of the state Capitol in Little Rock.

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Caterina McConnell, a freshman at the University of Arkansas, looks through a pair of eclipse viewing glasses Monday to watch the solar eclipse with friends at Union Mall on the campus of theUniversity of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The Associated Student Government hosted a free cookout on campus and handed out the specially designed glasses to students and faculty.

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Information for this article was contributed by Brandon Riddle of Arkansas Online.

State Desk on 08/22/2017

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