Thousands of people turned out at the National Mall, gathered on rooftops and put on eclipse glasses across the Washington, D.C., area on Monday to celebrate a rare and mesmerizing solar eclipse.
Long lines of people waited at Smithsonian museum tents to pick up eclipse glasses.
Not long after 2 p.m., the moon had started to block out a sliver of the sun. Then, the light on the National Mall turned slightly sepia-toned.
At 3:20 p.m., when the eclipse reached its maximum point, crowds began to cheer on the National Mall and at viewing parties around the D.C. area. More than 80% of the sun was blocked in D.C., and sunlight filtering through the trees cast crescent-shaped shadows.
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Monday’s total solar eclipse was the last one that will be visible over the continental U.S. for another 20 years. D.C., Maryland and Virginia weren’t in the path of totality, but other major cities from Dallas, Texas, to Burlington, Vermont, saw a corona of light as the moon completely obscured the sun.
Storm Team4 Chief Meteorologist Doug Kammerer watched the eclipse from Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which plunged into darkness in moments. The corona of light around the sun was pure white.
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"Here we go," Kammerer said. "Oh my God!"
"We are in nighttime!" he said. "I can actually see solar flares going on right now."
During the eclipse, the moon cast its shadow on parts of North America as it traveled between Earth and the sun, said Gina DiBraccio, the deputy director of heliophysics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The moon is relatively close to Earth right now, meaning areas in the path of totality saw a longer period of complete coverage than those viewing the 2017 eclipse did, the National Air and Space Museum’s Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony said.
“Solar eclipses in general are quite special,” Muir-Harmony said. “This particular one, the sun is at its solar maximum. So, it’s very, very active right now. The one in 2017, it was actually at its solar minimum. So, there could be interesting things to see."
Solar maximum means eclipse viewers may be more likely to see special streams of light and prominences, “which appear as bright, pink curls or loops coming off the Sun,” according to NASA.
When's the next solar eclipse?
Total solar eclipses are rarely visible throughout a huge swath of the United States.
The next total solar eclipse to sweep across the continental United States is set to occur on August 12, 2045, following a path from northern California to Florida, according to NASA (although Alaska will see one in 2033, and a total eclipse will pop over Montana and North Dakota in 2044, Forbes reports).
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