At Marshalltown Community College, hundreds of students and staff gathered in front of the building to watch the astronomical phenomenon. They even had the option to partake in SunKist pop, Sun Chips and Little Debbie Star Crunch cookies.

A special telescope equipped with a solar screen was set up, and students eagerly lined up for their turn to get a closer view of the eclipse, and capture pictures with their smartphones. Evan Frodermann, instructor of physics, engineering and mathematics, manned the telescope to protect eyes from solar retinopathy.

“It has a solar filter on it, so we can look at the sun,” he said. “Without the solar filter, you’d burn your eyes out. You can burn your eye within seconds, under a second, without the solar filter. I have to make sure everybody is safe.”

He said the high-powered 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope is normally used for the astronomy class. Another special feature of the telescope is its placement on a motorized solarmount. That allows the telescope to track the sun, as well as the stars, as the Earth rotates.

Marshalltown Community College students secure a seat on a bench to watch the eclipse. Numerous students went to the viewing.

“As the Earth rotates, it would go completely out of focus within minutes without the solarmount,” Frodermann said. “It allows us to track. It’s not perfect, but it does a pretty good job. It’s much better at night when there are multiple objects in the sky to focus on. The sun is pretty big in the telescope.”

He said the college had 60 to 70 students sign up for the viewing ahead of time. This is Frodermann’s second eclipse. In 2017, he was in southern Missouri for the “Great American Eclipse,” so called because the path stretched across the country, and was the first total eclipse in the United States since 1979. Then, Frodermann was in an area with 96 percent of the eclipse visible. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Marshalltown was in an area with 84 percent eclipse visibility.

On Frodermann’s bucket list is witnessing a total, 100 percent visible eclipse.

“The next one is in 2044 in North America,” he said. “I’ll probably have to travel to Europe or Australia to see one, but it’s an excuse to go travel.”

Frodermann said there are actually one or two eclipses every year, but they are not all total. However, with the Earth primarily consisting of water, he said those eclipses primarily happen over the Pacific, Atlantic or Indian oceans.

“So, it’s much more rare to see it over land,” Frodermann said. “We’re lucky to have two of them in the span of seven years. That’s why people are taking advantage of it. I don’t know the odds of that, but I know it’s not common.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.