Residents, scientists and visitors across San Antonio gazed skyward Saturday morning to witness a rare celestial show, filling children and adults alike with a sense of wonder.
For three minutes, the moon covered the sun, leaving a “ring of fire” outline of the star’s edges — a full annular eclipse that won’t be visible again in the contiguous U.S. until 2039.
Lisa Petrole and Raul Flores drove five hours from Dallas to witness the ring of fire, drawn by their 3-year-old son Victor’s enthusiasm for the rare celestial event. They joined about 100 others on the Hermann Sons Home Association’s roof, which was opened for the first time in decades.
“It’s been five years since I’ve been to San Antonio, so this is a really fun treat to be able to experience this,” Flores said.
Bee Vasquez and John Cwiek sat in camp chairs patiently waiting for intermittent glimpses of the developing eclipse through spotty cloud cover. They said San Antonians should feel special in that the city was positioned ideally for both the annular eclipse and the total solar eclipse coming in April.
“We’re the chosen ones,” Vasquez said with a lilt of mystery in her voice.
Theme music
Home Association President Lori Todd selected an eclipse-themed Spotify playlist as a soundtrack, with popular songs such as “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles and “Dark Star” by The Flaming Lips reverberating in the light rooftop breezes.
As annularity approached, attendees readied their eclipse glasses and craned their necks toward the obscured sun. Hearty cheers and a round of applause greeted the four-minute duration, and Todd repeated Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” hit for the song to last throughout the apex of the event.
Pat and Shelly Laursen have traveled to Mexico and Oregon for past major eclipse events, their efforts in each case frustrated by cloud cover or thick wildfire smoke. This time, cloud cover opened enough to see the ring of fire eclipse in its entirety.
“See how calm everybody gets when it actually happens,” Pat Laursen said, noticing the suddenly hushed crowd. And the couple finally got their full glimpse of an event they had anticipated for years. “We got lucky with the clouds clearing just in the nick of time,” he said.
At STEMclipse, an event at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology at Port San Antonio, there was more excitement. About 500 people in the parking lot cheered, whistled and clapped at 11:52 a.m. as an announcement echoed: “The ring of fire is happening right now. The ring of fire is happening right now.”
“I’m just looking at it and I’m in awe,” said Melanie Williams. “When I first put on the glasses … I can’t describe it, just to be able to witness it.”
Dressing up for the event
With partly cloudy skies overhead for much of the city throughout the morning, eclipse viewers at watch parties across the city waited nervously for the eclipse to begin Saturday morning.
“I see it!” yelled Rocco, age 6, as the clouds parted.
Then the clouds again obscured the sun, and Rocco ran back onto the playground to join a gaggle of other kids who’d come to the Advanced Learning Academy campus on Main Street downtown for its eclipse party.
As clouds covered then briefly unveiled the sun, parents yelled to their kids to pop their glasses back on and look up. Kids hopped off swings and rope climbers to jam their paper glasses on and crane their necks skyward.
“It looks like a banana,” said Wren, a first grader at ALA’s Euclid Street campus, before racing off to the zip line. Wren was dressed to the nines, in a fancy white dress with crinoline ruffles and white gloves, which she soon discarded.
“She insisted” on dressing up for the eclipse, said her dad, Adam Fleming.
Cheers and church bells
At Mission San José, folks stopped on the sidewalks and streets outside the mission to stare at the sky, squinting at the sun through eclipse glasses as the sky took on an eerie periwinkle hue.
Hundreds of visitors gathered on the mission’s grounds, some with telescopes, others with cameras. People broke out into cheers, applause, shouts and claps as the ring of fire became visible around 11:52 a.m.
Standing with their golden retriever Atlas, members of the Junnarkar family said they drove from Austin to view the event — wanting to be in the eclipse’s path of annularity.
Nearby couple John and Angela Medina, visitors from Minnesota, said they had come to San Antonio to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
“We were really excited when we found out San Antonio would be in the path” of the eclipse, Angela said.
As the moon began moving past the sun again, ending the ring of fire, the mission’s bells tolled loudly.
A time for study
At the San Antonio Zoo, personnel used the rare opportunity to study how its animals behaved during the eclipse. Though it lasts only a few minutes, animals have been known to exhibit unusual behavior during an eclipse, said Charles Ritzler, the zoo’s director of animal well-being.
“We’re actually doing it with a camera-based study so we can get eyes on as many animals as possible,” Ritzler said of staff members’ observations. “We’re looking at our hippos, Timothy and Uma. We’re looking at our American flamingo flock, whooping cranes, an endangered species of crane, as well as our white-throated capuchin monkeys, our dama gazelles and our Aldabra tortoises.”
As the skies grew dimmer, the flamingos appeared to be tucking in for a night’s rest. Ritzler said the chimpanzees climbed to the top of their structures and one of the juvenile chimpanzees seemed to be gesturing toward the sky.
“If you look at some of the animals that are most closely related to us… we see some really, really fascinating behaviors,” said Ritzler.
At the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology event, hosted by the Southwest Research Institute and UTSA, families worked on arts and crafts projects before the eclipse started and learned that the annular eclipse offered just a taste of a more significant celestial event: the total solar eclipse April 8.
“It’s not unique, but it’s pretty close to it,” Chris Packham, a UTSA physics and astronomy professor, said of the annular eclipse. “This is the appetizer eclipse. The total eclipse is going to be so much better, but this one’s pretty cool.”
Parts of San Antonio and most of the Hill Country will be in the path of totality for next year’s eclipse.
“It’s extremely rare for there to be two major eclipses on the same position so quickly, so we’re very, very lucky in this area,” Packham said.
Reporters Nicholas Frank, Andrea Drusch, Raquel Torres and Tracy Idell Hamilton contributed to this article.
