Lugnuts stadium, libraries may be only place to find eclipse viewing glasses

Lansing State Journal

LANSING - With a solar eclipse coming Monday, it's pretty hard to find a pair of eclipse viewing glasses in the Lansing area.

But there is still a chance to score one at a handful of events set for Monday.

Presuming the weather cooperates, Lansing's minor league baseball team will be on the field at Cooley Law School Stadium during Monday's solar eclipse. And the first 1,000 people through the gates will get a free pair of viewing glasses.

This is what people might see in some parts of the country as the solar eclipse fills their sky.

It is purely by coincidence that a home game will happen at the same time as a solar eclipse, a team official said.

"It is unusually good fortune," Lansing Lugnuts spokesman Jesse Goldberg-Strassler said. "We're already working on the schedule for next year, and I'm pretty sure we have not checked the eclipse schedule."

Meanwhile, three Capital Area District Library branches will hold viewing events on Monday, and all of them have a limited stash of viewing glasses.

CADL received about 1,600 viewing glasses through a grant from NASA, said Jolee Hamlin, the agency's senior associate director of public service.

More:

All of those have been given away, except for a few hundred held back for the viewing parties at the Holt-Delhi, Leslie and Aurelius branches, she said. Each of those branches has between 100 and 200 pairs of viewing glasses.

"It might be the sort of thing where people have to rotate using them," she said. "Some (branches) will do arts and crafts, and some will make pinhole viewers."

The free events are set for 11 a.m. to noon at the Delhi branch, 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. in Leslie and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Aurelius Township. They are open to patrons of all ages.

The overall chance of seeing the eclipse in mid-Michigan looks pretty small, according to the National Weather Service.

“It looks like there’s going to be quite a bit of high-level cloud cover around Monday,” said Janis Laurens, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids. “I would estimate the sky coverage is going to be at least 70 or 80 percent.

“The good news is, I don’t think that between around 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. the sky will be completely overcast at all locations, so at least some folks may be able to see brief glimpses of the eclipse.”

The eclipse will be visible between roughly those hours with peak occlusion happening about 2:24 p.m. In some parts of the country, the sun will be totally blocked by the moon. In the Lansing region, slightly less than 80 percent of the sun will be blocked at the peak of the eclipse.

“Some folks may be lucky and have the timing just right, that there’s some partial clearing right when the eclipse occurs," Laurens said.

Health officials say it's dangerous to look directly at the sun, even at the peak of a total eclipse.

As for the Lugnuts, there are only a few Monday afternoon games on their 2017 home schedule, and one of them happens to be this coming Monday. The game begins at noon. Beer and soft drinks will be $2. And because it's Monday, dogs will be allowed in the ballpark.

It was unclear if the game will be stopped at any point during the eclipse. It was also unclear how many advance tickets have been sold.

None of the Lansing-area retailers contacted by the State Journal on Friday had any eclipse viewing glasses left on their shelves.

Contact Ken Palmer at (517) 377-1032 or kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj. Vickki Dozier contributed to this story.