Where to celebrate Saturday’s partial eclipse 

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about next year’s total solar eclipse. Regional science and cultural institutions are busy preparing for the big show – and scores of related events – in 2024, but this weekend they’ll celebrate a partial eclipse with dozens of viewing opportunities and activities.

“This partial eclipse is just the perfect warm up for the total solar eclipse,” said RMSC’s Eclipse Program Coordinator Dan Schneiderman. “It works out perfectly as it's in the middle of the day, it's on a Saturday in October, it's just generally a good time to be outside.”

The eclipse begins at about noon and reaches its maximum at 1:13 p.m. It’ll look like a little bite has been taken out of the sun.

"It won't get darker out,” said Schneiderman. “We won't see animals act differently, but it will still be a cool sight to see, as long as you're viewing it safely."

You’ll need to wear eclipse viewing glasses if you plan on looking up at the sun. If you don’t have solar filter glasses on hand, there are easy ways to indirectly observe the eclipse.

“You can create your own pinhole viewer using that classic cardboard box, but you probably have a whole bunch of pinhole projector viewers at home as well,” Schneiderman said. “It can be a colander; it could be an index card with a small hole poked in it. Or it could even Ritz crackers or saltines or any food that has small holes in it.”

But even if the sky is overcast, there will be lots to do here on the ground, said Debra Ross, who chairs the Rochester Eclipse Task Force.

"At the Rochester Museum and Science Center, they are having an annular eclipse watch party, with lots of science oriented events,” Ross said. “They're going to teach you all about eclipses and the eclipse experience both in the Planetarium and in the main building,”

If the sky is clear, RMSC staff will also host eclipse-viewing outside, with telescopes with solar filters on them.

Other scheduled festivities include an eclipse-themed corn maze at Stokoe Farms in Wheatland where astrophysicist and artist Tyler Nordgren will be on hand to sign his eclipse posters. The Colonial Belle is offering a Partial Solar Eclipse Viewing Tour on the Erie Canal, Laughing Gull Chocolates is hosting a special tasting event, and many area libraries are hosting viewing parties and cultural events.

The full list of events is at rochestereclipse2024.org.

Rebecca Rafferty is an arts writer at CITY and the co-producer and host of art/WORK, an arts conversation video series created in collaboration with WXXI. She can be reached at [email protected].