Maine Solar Eclipse

Maine experienced a total solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024.

People from all over traveled to the “path of totality” in the northern and western parts of the state. (Bath experienced a “deep partial” eclipse at 96.8%). The last time Mainers witnessed a total solar eclipse at home was August 31st, 1932.

Some clips (below) from The Bath Daily Times give a taste of what that was like. Favorites include the spider that cast a web over an unsuspecting astronomer’s telescope, and the Bath Opera House’s matinee which offered patrons free eclipse glasses and a break in the film to go outside for the afternoon viewing. (This is if you hadn’t already purchased some of the “exposed photograph negatives” being sold by Pepper’s Studio on Front Street. 👀👀👀.)

Reports after the eclipse suggested the viewing was much more favorable on the coast, as opposed to some of the interior mountain spots, where folks had assumed they’d get that much closer and therefore that much better of a view.

Bath Daily Times, 8/30/1932