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Eclipse fun in the almost-totally blocked sun

Photos by Tequila Minsky

Monday’s total solar eclipse brought everyone streaming outside onto the streets and into the parks — including Washington Square Park — to get a glimpse of the rare phenomenon. Many used DIY viewers made from cereal boxes or other cardboard boxes, in which the sunlight passed through a pinhole from behind the person holding the box, who then saw a small white crescent of light inside the box, indicating how the moon was blocking most of the sun. (In New York City, unlike elsewhere in the country, the eclipse wasn’t technically total, but nearly so.) When the sun filtered through trees’ leaves, the patches of sunlight on the ground were, likewise, crescent-shaped. Others used special, extra-dark solar-eclipse sunglasses — which also had to be used when viewing the eclipse through cell-phone cameras to take photos of the event. Through the glasses, the sun appeared as a vivid, dark orange crescent while the moon blocking it was totally black. The whole thing lasted only a few hours, with the high point for the sun’s shading at 2:44 p.m. Despite warnings that it would become like night during the day, it never actually got very dark outside in New York City.

 

Lincoln Anderson