Engaging the Joliet Junior College Community with the Solar Eclipse of April 8, 2024

Joliet Junior College, a community college in Joliet, Illinois, held a free public viewing event to celebrate the April 8, 2024, Total Solar Eclipse. From Joliet, Illinois, this eclipse was a deep partial solar eclipse, not a total solar eclipse. The Moon occluded 94.2% of the Sun’s disk at maximum eclipse. About 1300 people attended this event, and each received a free custom eclipse viewer to safely see the eclipse. There were also telescopes available for attendees to safely observe the Sun. A LightSound device was available for the low vision community and NASA’s live stream of the total solar eclipse played indoors. Attendees could explore Sky and Telescope’s solar eclipse globe. The sky was clear throughout the eclipse. For several minutes around maximum eclipse, the air temperature was noticeably lower, and the sky a darker blue than when the Moon covered less of the Sun. Venus was seen by some attendees for about three minutes after maximum eclipse. In this article, I describe this highly successful event and briefly discuss the efforts involved organizing it. I also include recommendations that could help others organize similar solar eclipse viewing events successfully in the future.