People headed outside Saturday morning in communities across a swath of western and southern Oregon, with the goal of witnessing a rare celestial event: an "annular" eclipse of the sun.
An annular eclipse occurs when the moon passes in front of the sun, but is at a point in its orbit where it cannot fully obscure the sun. This creates a "ring of fire" around the edge of the moon, requiring viewers to wear eye-protection at all times.
Unless, of course, you can't see the sun at all, which was the case for many hopeful eclipse-watchers.
While rain largely stayed out of the area, forecasters had predicted cloud-cover in much of western Oregon, and those predictions largely turned out to be correct. Parts of the Willamette Valley were completely socked-in by fog Saturday morning.
But in places, the clouds parted just enough to allow brief glimpses of the drama in the sky.
Eclipse-watching events were held in communities ranging from the coast to southern Oregon.
In Eugene, hundreds of people stood on the lawn of the Eugene Science Center, which held a "viewing party."
Rick, a Eugene resident in his 70s, said he didn't think he’d live to see an event like this again.
“You get an opportunity to see something once in a lifetime, if you can experience it, you do," he said. "It's a natural thing of the universe that we don't have control over but we get to experience and appreciate or fear.”
The eclipse was obscured by clouds at first. But then, a hole opened up in the sky and people in the viewing party started to put their eclipse glasses on and enjoyed what they could.
The eclipse lasted more than two hours, but the most dramatic moment—the annularity—was over in about four minutes.
For eclipse fans, that was long enough to justify a long drive to get to its path.
Chris Regan made his way from Seattle to a spot in the Deschutes National Forest in northern Klamath County. He said that's a change from the total eclipse six years ago, which he experienced as a partial-eclipse in Seattle.
"In 2017, I didn't take the drive to Oregon to see the totality, and I totally regret it," he said.
KLCC's Tiffany Eckert contributed to this report.
