Sonoma County residents get glimpse of Ring of Fire eclipse

Clouds that promised to obscure the Ring of Fire eclipse from Sonoma County residents parted at about 9:30 a.m. for long enough that the annular solar phenomenon became visible to those in waiting.

“It was really cool, pretty emotional,” said Eric McHenry, who joined about 150 people at an eclipse viewing party at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Kenwood’s Sugarloaf State Park.

McHenry, president of the observatory’s board of directors, said that because of the cloud cover, the eclipse appeared as an “ethereal” object with a mist of clouds behind it that was 3/4 covered by the moon.

The observatory was also tapped into the NASA live stream of the event, which people watched in the observatory’s classroom, McHenry said.