Paul Casanova Garcia, 71, was staring into the lens of a 600mm camera, studying solar flares visible from where he was sitting in the back of Mission San Jose, one of five Spanish colonial missions in San Antonio, Texas.
Moments later, the main event, the full ring of fire, took place at 11:53 AM. “The eclipse is really important and spiritual for the Native American people,” said Mr. Garcia, a member of the San Antonio Mission of Indian Descendants. group and traces part of his DNA to the Lipan Apache tribe in Texas.
People started clapping and shouting “Wow!” The moon also took its place in front of the sun. Margot Moreno, 64, put on goggles and shouted: “This is great, great!”
San Antonio will be one of the rare locations in the world to witness two eclipses in six months, an annular eclipse today and a total eclipse in April.
Thousands of people viewed the eclipse today at the mission, which is part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and at other places throughout the city, the nation’s seventh-largest.
“We have never seen an event like this before,” said PT Lathrop, head of the park’s interpretation and education department.
Easton Galindo, 11, a fifth-grader, said he wants to be an astrophysicist when he grows up.
“This is really cool,” Easton said, adding: “We’re very lucky.”
Others had a more scientific view of the experiment.
Matthew LaFrancis, 25, who attended a number of astronomy classes at the local university, said he noticed the climate became cooler because the eclipse reduced the amount of radiation transmitted to Earth.
“You can feel it getting colder,” Mr. LaFrancis said. “It was a great experience.”
As the moon began to move away from the sun, the crowds slowly began to move away. A small group of women looked at the sky and then at the people heading toward the exit and shrugged.
“Why are they leaving? We indigenous people know that we will stay until the end,” said Maria Luisa Colli, 60, referring to her Native American heritage. “We are not going halfway. We see it through. It’s magical. For us, it corresponds to everything, to the creation of the world and the universe.
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