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Fanfare for Monday's eclipse was evident everywhere in the United States. Here in L.A., it reached a fever pitch at the Griffith Observatory, where at least 4,000 people gathered to watch the celestial phenomenon, according to the L.A. Times.
As shown in the pictures above, the gathering brought out people of all stripes. There were the young, budding astronomers with their solar glasses, the DIY geeks who made their own pinhole cameras, the photographers with their prohibitively expensive gear, the science buffs with their telescopes, as well as the cadre of chill people who arrived to lay out on the lawn and take it slow. The Times reports that the crowd cheered as the eclipse reached its peak, which happened at 10:21 a.m.
Of course, the area was crowded. The lines for solar glasses were impossibly long, as were the lines for people wanting to view the eclipse through a solar telescope. This led some people to do the exact thing they weren't supposed to do: look at the sun. "I did look with half my eye a little bit, unfortunately," Mark Javier from Daly City told the Times. "I couldn't really see it. It might damage my eye a little bit, but you only live once."
CBS took this overhead shot that gives us another perspective on how big the crowd was.
#LIVE: Total #SolarEclipse seen in Oregon skies; crowds watch at #GriffithObservatory #SolarEclipse2017 https://t.co/ffml3q9iMt pic.twitter.com/txFlt3tJmO
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) August 21, 2017
If you missed this eclipse (where the hell were you?), the next one to pass through the U.S. will be in 2024.
