A large, steady stream of students, faculty, staff and local residents eagerly accepted pairs of eclipse glasses handed out by members of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society (LAAS) as they gathered at the Center for the Sciences at Pierce College to witness the solar eclipse on April 8.
Physics and Planetary Sciences Department Chair Dale Fields—with the help of the LAAS—hosted an Eclipse Party. Fields wanted to host this event to help bring the community together.
“This is a community college and we should connect as a community and show the cool things that are going on in the world,” Fields said.
Long lines of eclipse-watchers formed to look through telescopes. A friend of Fields, Phillip S. Taylor, works with the LAAS and came to help.
“The friend of mine is a professor of astronomy here and wanted us to help them out with all these people and we brought two telescopes,” Taylor said.
Board of Director with LAAS David Yakerson assisted with the event.
“We’re here with Dr. Shields to help with looking at the sun for the solar eclipse today,” Yakerson said.
Fields wanted this event for the students and local community to hopefully gain something from this special experience.
“I hope that people can see that this natural world is an amazing thing and that there are cool things happening everyday, different kinds of things, that they may not even realize there is an eclipse going on and they can actually see it here,” Fields said.
