Squinting isn’t good enough for viewing the partial solar eclipse this Saturday morning. The eclipse will be visible across the Bay Area, obscuring 77 percent of the sun’s light at its peak, but don’t look at it without the right shades.

“The sun is very bright and the amount of ultraviolet that comes from it is dangerous for our retinas. So, you should never look at the sun at any time,” said Dr. Bryan Mendez, astronomer and director of the planetarium at the Lawrence Berkeley Hall of Science. 

The public is invited to watch the event from the Lawrence’s 270-degree observation point. There will be a special event featuring hands-on solar science activities, including telescopes and a live feed, and scientists from UC Berkeley’s space sciences laboratory will be present to answer questions.

Saturday’s eclipse will start in Oregon and cross through Texas, but everyone in the continent will be able to see a partial eclipse. 

Special solar eclipse viewing glasses will be available for purchase from The Lawrence Discovery Store, and Lawrence members get free eclipse viewing glasses while supplies last.

The peak time for viewing is between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., but the eclipse will occur between 8:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.