Hundreds swarmed the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus Monday afternoon to catch a glimpse of the partial eclipse.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
Hundreds turn out for viewing party at Penn State Wilkes-Barre’s campus
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21-year-old marketing major Hailey Carey poses with the children’s book she illustrated, ‘The Sky is the Limit,’ which was created by Penn State Wilkes-Barre staff.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
Although the sky was overcast, the clouds parted more than once so that everyone could catch a glimpse of the rare celestial event.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
Adam Simmonette, 27, of Dallas, and Sydney Janeiro, 24, of Scranton, pose for a photo on the Wilkes-Barre Penn Sate campus Monday for the school’s solar eclipse viewing party.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
People of all ages brought out blankets and lawn chairs to settle in for the partial solar eclipse Monday and Penn State Wilkes-Barre provided special eclipse glasses to protect against the sun’s rays.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
The view of the partial eclipse from Exeter around 3:20 p.m. Monday.
submitted by Peter Urban
LEHMAN TWP.— For an astronomy lover like Sydney Janeiro, there was nothing better than spending her 24th birthday Monday sitting outside on a blanket with her eyes trained upward to witness the partial solar eclipse that passed through the afternoon sky.
“I was really excited for this. I was in the astronomy club in high school and I just really like this kind of stuff,” gushed the Scranton resident. “I interned at a radio station in high school and I covered a story about the eclipse back in 2017, so I was like, ‘I just have to see it today.’”
Although the sky was overcast, with the clouds obscuring the sun for most of the day, Janeiro and her companion, Adam Simmonette, 27, of Dallas, said they were still able to get “some really good views” of the celestial event.
“The sky opened up perfectly for a little bit, and we got to see the different stages of it,” Simmonette said.
Janeiro added, “We knew it was gonna be cloudy, and we thought we’d get to see it maybe once, but we saw it a few times which was nice.”
Janeiro and Simmonette were just two out of hundreds who swarmed the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus Monday to witness the rare astronomical event with a special viewing party organized by the school.
The event featured arts and crafts, tours of the Friedman Observatory and readings in the library of “The Sky is the Limit,” a children’s picture book written by Penn State staff and illustrated by a student.
People came from all over the state and even outside of it for the event, such as Lindsay and George Gettinger, who hailed from Cumberland, Rhode Island.
“We’re here visiting family and we came up to watch the eclipse with a lot of other people rather than just ourselves,” George said.
Lindsay, who was watching footage from Maine of the eclipse on her phone, lamented that her three sisters lived in states that were experiencing “the real thing,” meaning a total eclipse where the moon completely covered the sun.
Since only a small portion of Pennsylvania was within the path of totality, most of the state witnessed the eclipse at about 90% coverage.
Still the couple was happy to participate in the activities on campus and even bought copies of ‘The Sky is the Limit’ for their grandchildren.
Since American won’t experience another solar eclipse until 2044, Lindsay knew how special the event was for her and her husband.
“We’re in our 70s so we don’t know in 21 years whether we’ll be around,” she said.
According to Marketing and Communications Specialist Alyssa Ellsworth, the special viewing party had been in the works for about a year and was the result of a collaboration between physics and astronomy professor Dr. Violet Major and Friedman Observatory assistant John Belanger, along with the strategic communications team.
“We had a sense of how many people would be here, but over the past few weeks as people have been learning about the event and were exposed to it by the media, the response has grown,” Ellsworth said. “It’s been really exciting to experience all of these people on campus.”
Ellsworth stressed that the event would not have been possible without the many student volunteers who helped give out solar eclipse glasses, worked the craft stations and gave tours of the Friedman Observatory.
The event was also educational.
“We have UV activated bracelets, where the bracelet beads are clear, and you expose them to UV light and then they change color,” Ellsworth explained. “So it’s teaching children about how UV light ultimately works and it kind of mimics what happens when our bodies are exposed to UV light.”
For Ellsworth, though, one of the best features of the event, was readings of ‘The Sky is the Limit,’ the picture book illustrated by 21-year-old marketing major Hailey Carey, who spent her first two years as a student at the Wilkes-Barre campus and is now finishing her degree at University Park.
For Carey, it was a surreal experience to be a part of such a unique project for her school.
“This means that I get to leave a little bit of myself, not only with the university, but with my home campus and I think that’s really special to me.”