More than 1,000 people gathered at the Exploratorium in San Francisco on Monday morning to get special viewing glasses and watch the partial solar eclipse from the rooftops and plazas.

In the Bay Area, weather was clear and residents were able to see about one-third of the sun blocked by the moon.

The eclipse began about 10:15 a.m. Pacific time and lasted for about two hours.

A 115-mile wide path of totality, when the sun’s disc was completely covered by the moon, spanned across areas of Mexico, Canada and U.S. states from Texas to Maine.

The moon partially covers the sun at 11:15 a.m. during Monday’s solar eclipse as seen from from Lime Ridge in Concord. While some parts of the country were able to see a total eclipse, Bay Area viewers only got to see the moon cover about 34 percent of the sun’s surface. (Ray Saint Germain/Bay City News)

At the Exploratorium, spectators took advantage of the clear skies on Monday.

“They are off for spring break, and I’m off, so what better way to start the week,” said Nikhil Laud, an administrator with the San Francisco Unified School District. His daughter Lena, age 10, said she got a lecture in space rocks in school, but she understands the moon is covering the sun.

Viewers at San Francisco’s Exploratorium react with applause at the moment the total solar eclipse was first spotted in Mazatlan, Mexico, via NASA live stream. (Ruth Dusseault/Bay City News)

When asked how far away the sun is, her little brother Raj, age 5, said it was “about five minutes.” “It looks like a bite of the cookie. We have our glasses on, so then we can see it a little work,” said Raj.

Meg Ruxton, age 63, remembers seeing a solar eclipse in grade school in the 1960s. “We made pinhole viewers and watched it in school.” Her friend Polly Paulsen was excited by a Friday lecture from UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, Alex Filippenko. “All I can remember is his enthusiasm. He told us we must see it because it won’t happen again until 2044.”

Calvin Wu of Concord watches the solar eclipse through solar film from Lime Ridge in Concord on April 8, 2024. (Ray Saint Germain/Bay City News)

Three galleries live-streamed the event featuring scientists from the Exploratorium, who travelled to Junction, Texas and Torreón, Mexico. Hour-long educational programs were presented in English and Spanish.

The Exploratorium was the first museum to webcast eclipse images directly from a telescope 25 years ago and has since partnered with NASA on eclipse expeditions around the world, from Turkey and China to remote Zambia and Micronesia.

Other viewing events were held Monday at the Chabot Science Center in Oakland and the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley.

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.