3:15 p.m. in Centerburg

Southwest of Mount Vernon in Centerburg, Ohio, Juana Burke and her daughter Layke await the eclipse. 

Layke, now 15, saw the partial eclipse in 2017 but thinks “this one was way cooler.”

Her mother, Juana, agrees. 

“The solar gods have given us a gift,” Juana said to TRP reporter Brin Glass while sitting on a colorful blanket amid her farm. The total eclipse “was epic, and I’m so glad we had visibility.”

3:10 p.m. in Mount Vernon

3:00 p.m. in Centerburg

The shadows lengthened across the grassy park on the corner of East Main and Clayton Streets in the village of Centerburg, Ohio.

A dozen folks gathered to watch the eclipse, a woman alone on a bench, grandparents with their granddaughter home from school snacking on Subway sandwiches, two women in black–everyone wearing eclipse glasses, eyes gazing upwards. 

Behind the park, just off Cherry Alley, the sound of a crying baby and birds confused by the growing darkness. 

The lights in the park and on East Main flicker on. 

“Wait, I can’t see it anymore,” someone said. 

“Take your glasses off!” another replied. 

“It’s a fire circle.”

Darkness settled, the air cooled. Quiet. A sparrow rested on a wire in the alley. Confused. 

One minute. Twenty-four seconds. 

David Carey, from just down the road in Gahanna, played Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse” from Dark Side of the Moon: “All that you touch / And all that you see /All that you taste/ All you feel…And everything under the sun is in tune/ But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”

As the totality ended, Carey switched to “Here Comes the Sun,” by The Beatles, and then said, “Good work, God!”

“Unbelievable. It was a pretty surreal experience. I felt like I was in the stars,” he said. 

“It was awesome,” his son Isaiah said. “I took my glasses off when there was this last beam and I could see the sun disappearing.”

2:45 p.m. in Mansfield

“Woah!” 87-year-old Susie Kamlen gasped at the total solar eclipse above her. “Isn’t it something? The moon just sliding over the sun like that, turning daylight into night for a bit. I’ve lived a long time, but I’m never seen the sky do something quite like this before. It’s beautiful, really.”

2:30 p.m. in Centerburg

Ceciel Shaw, center, looks to the sky with her children in Centerburg, Ohio during the April 8 eclipse.

Centerburg is in the path of totality for the eclipse, and residents will be able to see the totality for approximately 1 minute and 24 seconds.

2:00 p.m. in Mansfield

The Mansfield Art Center is hosting the “Total Eclipse of the Art” event throughout the eclipse Monday afternoon, though the museum is typically closed on Mondays.

1:45 in Mount Vernon

Lancaster residents Maggie and Matt Conrad made an hourlong drive north to the Ariel-Foundation Park in Mount Vernon to get within the band of totality. They were pleasantly surprised to find that the commute wasn’t even longer.

“Everyone was talking about how bad traffic was going to be,” Matt said.

The pair arrived at 1:45 and killed time by relaxing beside one of the small ponds at the park. Though they were able to catch a partial solar eclipse in 2017, they jumped on the opportunity to see something even more fascinating this time around.

“I’m excited to see the Corona,” Maggie said. “That’s why I really wanted to be in the total band.” 

1:45 p.m. in Marysville

Walking Distance Brewing Company set out diagrams of what the eclipse will look like when it crosses over central Ohio at approximately 3 p.m.

1:30 p.m. in Mansfield

Denison University Professor John Soderberg brought his Archaeology of Religion class to Snow Trails, a ski lodge near Mansfield within the path of totality.

“We could see the slowly disappearing sun above us and below us, dozens of people in the lodge listening to live music, drinking a beer from the bar and setting up folding chairs on the back porch,” said Denison University sophomore Emma Baum. “During the eclipse it got very dark and the temperature dropped about 5-10 degrees. Multiple loud sounds like gunshots could be heard during the minutes of totality, and there was lots of cheering when the sun began to reappear.” 

1:30 p.m. in Alum Creek State Park

Landon Rippeth, a 21-year-old from Chillicothe, Ohio, works at COSI — the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus — as a living collections specialist for the science museum.

“It’s super exciting to see something that not a lot of people get to see,” Rippeth told The Reporting Project reporter Noah Fishman. “I’m here at Alum Creek, with my friends and family to watch the eclipse in totality. It means a lot, I’ve always liked astronomy and stars since I was a kid. It’s a really exciting time especially because there won’t be another one in this area for decades.”

1:00 p.m. in Columbus

Questions about the path of the eclipse arose early last week after new projections showed the path of totality would be slightly smaller than previously thought.

New amateur calculations suggested the path could be off by as much as a third of a mile, but NASA has no intention of changing its maps ahead of the eclipse, a spokesperson for the agency told the Detroit Free Press.

For communities along the edge of totality — including parts of Licking County — those small discrepancies could reduce the length of time people could see the totality. Current estimates show totality could last anywhere from under one minute to up to four minutes in parts of Ohio.

12:00 p.m. in Marysville

Thousands of people are flooding into central Ohio Monday, April 8 to observe a once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse.

The last time a total solar eclipse passed over Ohio, Thomas Jefferson was in the White House, Lewis and Clark had finally reached the Pacific Ocean and construction was beginning on the first federal highway. It was 1806, and a total solar eclipse — when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, completely obscuring the sun — hasn’t occurred in Ohio since then.

Two centuries later, thousands of Ohioans live in the 124-mile-wide path of totality for the eclipse, and communities have planned ahead to handle the barrage of traffic and the influx of travelers hoping to see the celestial event.

Across central Ohio, restaurants, bars, libraries, parks, museums and schools have prepared events to celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse.

At Walking Distance Brewing Company in Marysville, attendees are celebrating the eclipse at the “End of the World Solar Eclipse Jam Fest” with live music, food trucks and an eclipse-themed menu.

Marysville is in the path of totality, and will experience the full eclipse for just over 3 minutes.