Dozens of people visited Village Creek State Park over the weekend to watch Saturday’s annular solar eclipse.
Park rangers posted a “no vacancy” sign for RV plug in camping sites the morning of the event.
Park Ranger Alex Stamatis set up two telescopes with solar filters to protect attendee’s eyes while watching the eclipse. Village Creek State Park staff also handed out solar viewing cards and glasses.
The annual solar eclipse started around 10:30 a.m. in Southeast Texas and hit the maximum coverage about noon, then ended around 1:30 a.m.
“People forget that it’s two solar objects,” he said. “Everybody is focused on the sun, but there’s actually two solar objects out there that are causing this — the sun and the moon. Because we’re facing the dark side of the moon right now, we can’t see any features of the moon — it just looks like a black disk.”
Families and their children listened while Stamatis explained how the distance between the earth, sun and moon plays into what causes an eclipse.
“We on earth are particularly lucky that we have these kinds of events because the sun is much larger than the moon,” he said. “Even though the sun and the moon are completely different sizes because of the relative distance, they look almost exactly the same as they move across the sky. Where they line up completely, we have that opportunity for the moon to cross in front of the sun and block out all of the light.”
A cross section of Texas as well as other parts of the United States were in the penumbra of the eclipse, meaning that about 80 percent of the sun is covered.
“One thing to think about as you’re looking at this eclipse is that everyone in the United States can see a partial eclipse right now, at least part of it,” Stamatis said. “Try to think about how many people are looking at the exact same object that you’re looking at right now, especially here in Texas in the path of totality, there will be millions and millions of people looking up at the sun right now, just as you are.”
He asked attendees to be careful not to look at the eclipse for long periods, even using the solar viewing cards and filtered telescopes since it could cause damage to your retinas.
Art Lind came from Groves with his wife to watch the astronomical phenomenon.
“It’s interesting,” he said. “The ranger is really good and I learned a few things that I never thought about before.”
Dylan Soileau and Kassi Gary drove from Sour Lake to the park for the viewing.
“We wanted to see it here because they said everything is going to react when it gets dark, the bugs and the animals are going to think that it’s nighttime so we wanted to see that,” Gary said.
She said they enjoyed looking through the telescopes along with using the solar viewing cards.
“The sun is going to be covered — it’s my favorite Pink Floyd album,” Gary said.
Eleanor Skelton 