Art Ybarra just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
He and his wife typically walk around Central Park in Saugus every morning, and it just so happened that on Monday morning, a man was assembling a telescope to be able to view the solar eclipse.
“It caught my curiosity,” Ybarra said. “I knew there was an eclipse, but I didn’t think I could see it from here.”
Ybarra returned to Central Park later on to find more than 100 people eagerly awaiting a chance to view the moon passing in front of the sun. The Los Angeles area was expected to see only half of the sun covered, with maximum coverage expected at 11:12 a.m., though it could have been viewed at any point between 10:10 and 11:49 a.m.
A total solar eclipse could have been viewed in the United States starting in San Antonio, with its path moving northeast toward Cleveland before heading further east and into Canada. Multiple posts on social media showed the sky darkening in those areas as if it were nighttime, despite it being in the middle of the day, as a bright bulb shone in the sky.
Multiple people had set up telescopes at Central Park to get an up-close look at the astronomical event. Some, like David Flynn, were part of The Local Group Astronomy Club of Santa Clarita Valley.
Flynn said he’s held pretty much every position imaginable during his time with the club, but these days is simply an active member. He had set up a table where people could pick up special eclipse glasses and learn more about how rare an eclipse is and exactly what occurs.
“Technically, there’s an eclipse every month, but the way the moon orbits the Earth, sometimes the shadow of the moon misses the planet,” Flynn said. “The shadow’s gonna cover some place on the planet. This time, we rotated around in the right spot that it was daytime when it happened for us.”
The club didn’t plan too far in advance, only sending out information last week to anyone interested in joining members at Central Park. Even with the impromptu nature of the event, Flynn was happy to see such a large crowd gather on what would otherwise be a typical Monday morning in the SCV.
Mixed in with the crowd were a group of home-school students with Dyana Vos, who was excited to allow the students a chance to learn and have fun at the same time.
“How often do you get to look directly at it and see it up close?” Vos said. “So, it’s really important for us to get out and do things that are hands-on.”
Patxi Artigot Caballero and his wife, Sara Bianchi, were using their eclipse glasses while lounging on the grass. Immigrants from Spain and Italy, respectively, the couple just happened to choose Santa Clarita as their home.
“We were talking, like it’s something that happens just once in many, many years,” Artigot Caballero said. “And we’re lucky to be here because if we would be back in Europe, we couldn’t have seen anything.”
As for what could be observed, Ybarra said he was able to look through pretty much every telescope that was assembled at the park and witness more and more of the sun be covered up.
“Just watching it move,” Ibarra said. “It’s not going to cover it totally, but a good portion of it. And that’s pretty cool.”
And while he was able to observe the eclipse himself and enjoyed that, Flynn said being able to teach others and watching them become awestruck upon seeing the eclipse made the experience even better. An electrical engineer by trade, Flynn said he’s hopeful that events like this would spur people to want to enter into one of the science, technology, engineering or math fields.
“I just really dig doing this. It’s fun,” Flynn said. “I love the teaching aspect, to get people excited and encourage the STEM stuff.”
Vos said that experiencing the eclipse with the community made the experience all the better.
“Other people experiencing it at the same time and just feeling that community connection, and experiencing something that’s pretty rare,” Vos said.
