A Total Solar Eclipse Leaves a Nation in Awe

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The United States basked in the glory of a total eclipse on Monday, as the moon’s shadow swept from the rocky beaches of Oregon to the marshes of South Carolina.

Over an hour and a half, along a 70-mile-wide ribbon of land, in tiny towns like Glendo, Wyo., and metropolises like Nashville, on dirt roads and superhighways, in modest yards and grand national parks, coastal lowlands and high mountains, the world appeared to hush for a few minutes as the moon stood up to the sun, perfectly blocking its fierce light except for the corona, the halo of hot gas that surrounds it.

This was totality, an event that had not happened in the continental United States since 1979 and had not traversed such a broad swath of the country in nearly a century.

Darkness descended in the summer afternoon, the air caught a quick chill, Venus appeared in the near-night sky and, in Depoe Bay, Ore., one of the first places to fall under the shadow, a flock of confused sea gulls began to call out.

Even humans — who knew what was going on — were left to hunt for words to describe the spectacle.

“I’m in awe,” whispered Ibeth Arriaga, who had come from Los Angeles to Depoe Bay, where, despite some fog, the moon’s slip across the sun was just visible.

The weather cooperated along much of the eclipse’s path, which included parts of 14 states. Scientists in Salem, Ore., who had gambled that skies would be clear there, were not disappointed. They shouted and hugged each other as totality ended. Their telescopes and other instruments — many of them meant to gain a better understanding of the mysterious corona — captured the eclipse under ideal conditions.

“This was absolutely fabulous,” said Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College and one of the leading eclipse watchers in the world. “As perfect as possible.” There would be plenty of data to keep his graduate students occupied, he added with a grin.

But clouds affected viewing in some places, easing up briefly to offer a glimpse of totality in Beatrice, Neb., and Kansas City, Mo., and obscuring it completely in Charleston.

Nowhere was the weather more fickle than in Carbondale, Ill., a hotbed of activity for scientists from NASA and other places, where 15,000 people gathered to watch in the football stadium of Southern Illinois University.

About five minutes before totality, an enormous cloud went rogue, obscuring the sun. The crowd screamed, pleading with it to leave, and for a minute or two a window opened up, only to close again.

But being in Carbondale, where totality lasted a generous 2 minutes 38 seconds, paid off. Another gap in the clouds opened up and the eclipsed sun was visible for a few moments.

Over the weekend and into Monday, eclipse watchers flocked to the path of totality, clogging roads, filling hotel rooms and taxing local facilities in some places. But for hundreds of millions more who were not in the zone, the sun and moon put on a show nonetheless, offering a partial eclipse.

None of the 50 states was left untouched. Even in Anchorage, nearly half of the sun was blocked by the moon at maximum eclipse at about 9:15 a.m. local time.

In New York, where about 70 percent of the sun was eventually blocked, office workers left their desks and crowded the streets for a view.

At the White House, President Trump, his wife and their son Barron walked onto the Truman Balcony Room shortly before the eclipse reached its maximum of 81 percent.

When a reporter asked, “How’s the view?” Mr. Trump gave a thumb’s up. The three watched the partial eclipse through glasses for about a minute and a half before returning inside.

Here in Charleston, the final city on the eclipse route, the clouds wreaked havoc with totality. But with classes starting Tuesday, the hundreds of College of Charleston students gathered for a campus viewing of the eclipse celebrated anyway. They hooted and hollered as the moon slowly worked its way across the sun — a sight that, with glasses, was visible through the clouds. And they screamed again after totality, when a crescent sun again made an appearance.

Then the eclipse headed past Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, across slivers of coastal wetlands and out over the Atlantic Ocean, where it ended for good at sunset near Africa.

The nation won’t have to wait decades for the next one — a total eclipse will sweep from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024.