On April 8th 2024, there was a solar eclipse that crossed the US. The path of totality crossed Mexico, entered the United States in Texas, and continued to cross through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Unfortunately, I was not in the path of totality living in North Carolina, and because I was in North Carolina, I only got to see about 86% coverage of the sun. Annnnnnd because I saw less than 100% coverage of the sun, that meant that I saw a partial eclipse. By now, you probably figured out that 100% coverage of the sun is called a total eclipse. If you don’t know what an eclipse is or what the path of totality is, let me be the one to tell you.
Number one! An eclipse is when the earth, moon, and sun line up in one line for a few moments. The sun is really big and far from the Earth, and the moon is really small and close to the Earth so from the right angle it looks like they are the same size. Number two! The path of totality is the track of the moon shadow across the Earth. Cool, right?
The day of the eclipse was a half day at my school. You got a choice to leave school early or you could watch the eclipse. I chose to watch the eclipse.
My last class period before the eclipse started was science. We ended class early so we could go out to get first dibs to get a look at the slowly starting eclipse through a special telescope. It was really fun and I even got to see a sunspot (a dark spot on the sun).
Later, all the students that were watching the eclipse went into our school auditorium called Horton Hall. They talked about the safety precautions that we needed to take while viewing the eclipse. The precautions were to make sure not to look directly up at the sun without any eclipse glasses, and that if you were to put on or take off your eclipse glasses, you look at the ground first instead of taking them off or putting them on while looking at the sun. Before we went outside, all the teachers started handing out eclipse glasses so we could view the eclipse safely. Keep in mind that safety talk felt like it took FOR-EVER.
When we FINALLY made it outside, the sun was covered by about 40% already. The first thing I saw was my parents. I talked to them for a bit and told them about my day. After that, I watched the eclipse for a while and took a lot of photos with my parents’ phones. Don’t worry, the phone cameras are fine. I used the eclipse glasses by putting them on top of the phone lens and took a photo. After taking a lot of photos, I decided to go hang out with my friends. We talked amongst ourselves and enjoyed the moon pies and sun chips that our school provided for the eclipse watching. I even got to practice my front hand-spring and landed it! While everyone was watching the eclipse, taking photos, or playing with each other, I noticed all the shadows on the ground, created by the trees, looked like they had crescent moons scattered in them. I was amazed by the shadows and took a lot of photos of it.
At 3:20 PM, the eclipse party was officially over and we started to head back home. Personally speaking, I had a really fun time and I can’t wait for the next eclipse to come that I will be able to see.
