The western Kentucky town of Paducah had VIP seating and mighty fine weather for Monday’s celestial show. Paducah sits roughly halfway between Makanda, Ill., where the total solar eclipse lasted the longest, and Hopkinsville, Ky., where it was the darkest. The river town hosted eclipse-viewing events across the city, but the biggest was “Night at Noon” on the campus of West Kentucky Community and Technical College. That’s where a crowd of a few thousand watched the Earth’s only natural satellite devour the sun at 1:22 p.m. When “totality” happened, the temperature dropped 4 degrees (to a still toasty 88 Fahrenheit), the cicadas screeched and people cast aside their eclipse glasses and said either “Oh my god,” “Whoa!” or “Wooh!” as they took in the unforgettable image of a black disk wreathed by the white flames of the sun’s rarely visible corona. Totality lasted for 2 minutes and 21 seconds, but the memories made Monday afternoon on that campus lawn will last a lifetime.
— Lori Rackl, Chicago Tribune
