Hundreds gather in Farmington to witness solar eclipse

Andrew Zeiler, of Gem Village, Colorado, held a colander to the ground as little shadows mimicking the moon over the sun glowed on the concrete pavement during the annular solar eclipse Saturday in the Connie Gotsch Courtyard at San Juan College.

“It’s like the pinhole cameras, but with hundreds of images of the sun,” Zeiler said, adding that he came down to Farmington to watch the eclipse because the path of annularity was directly over the area.

That is also why Durango residents Adam Clark and Rachel Zima came down.

“We wanted to experience more totality of the eclipse,” Clark said.

There were people from all over the nation, who came to the Four Corners region to participate in the eclipse. Even NASA sent students from South Dakota School of Mines to the San Juan College Campus to follow the eclipse.

“We’re tracking a high-altitude balloon through a NASA program to video the shadow as it moves across the United States,” said Cara Ronish, 18, a freshman at the school. “There’s multiple teams of universities following the shadow to see the annularity. It’s really cool to watch.”

About 150 people of all ages lined the courtyard. Some were sitting in the outdoor amphitheater, while others walked around visiting and looking at the projected image through a telescope. There also were more than 30 groups of people logged into a Zoom feed of the image projected by San Juan College planetarium director David Mayeux.

“I have people viewing from Boston, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, just from all over,” Mayeux said.

He planned for this event for months, developing the logistics of setting up multiple viewing stations in the courtyard and providing people an opportunity to experience the annular solar eclipse, which passed directly overhead.

It was a new moon on Saturday when the eclipse began at 9:11 a.m. with the maximum eclipse just before 10:34 a.m. This was when the “ring of fire” appeared, causing the courtyard to erupt in applause as onlookers gasped at the image.

The ring of the sun’s light was around the moon’s silhouette because “even at maximum eclipse the moon can’t quite cover the Sun completely,” Mayeux said.

This happens because with “the farthest point in the moon’s orbit from Earth, called apagy, the moon’s disc is a tiny bit smaller than the Sun,” he said.

Skyler Woods, 18, of Kirtland attempted to capture the image on his phone’s camera, shooting it through his solar eclipse glasses.

“I love space and seeing space events is so cool for me,” Woods said, adding he was especially excited that the eclipse was directly over Farmington.

“Everyone gathering around here, coming together to witness an event like this is too cool,” Woods said.

Kyle Maddox, of Farmington, brought his whole family including his son Logan Maddox, who said the two were “space buddies.”

Logan recently turned 9 and had a space-themed birthday party. “We’ve just always been interested in space,” Kyle said. “I’m stoked this is happening. It’s awesome. I’ve been looking forward to this for a month.”

Linda Korte, 80, of Farmington, was not planning to attend the event, but said her family made her come out for the eclipse. It was not what she expected.

“This was something spectacular,” she said. “It was better than I expected, and I’m glad we came.”

In the U.S. alone, more than 6.5 million people lived along the path of annularity, but Farmington was the prime location to witness the eclipse, which ended at 12:04 p.m.