More than 1,000 people gathered at the Exploratorium in San Francisco on Monday morning.
In the Bay Area, the weather was clear and residents could see about a third of the sun blocked by the moon.
The eclipse began at 10:15 a.m. Pacific time and lasted about two hours.
The 115-mile-wide path, when the Sun's disk is completely covered by the Moon, spans Mexico, Canada and the US states from Texas to Maine.
At the Exploratorium, visitors took advantage of clear skies on Monday.
“They're off for spring break and I'm off, so what better way to start the week,” said San Francisco Unified School District Administrator Nikhil Ladd. His daughter, Lena, age 10, said she received a lecture about space rocks at school, but understands that the moon eclipses the sun.
When asked how far away the sun was, her little brother Raj, age 5, said, “About five minutes.”
“It looks like it's a cookie bite, and we've got a mirror, so we can do some work,” Raj said.
Meg Ruxton, 63, remembers watching the solar eclipse in grade school in the 1960s, saying, “We made pinhole viewers and watched it at school.” Her friend Polly Paulsen was excited by UC Berkeley's distinguished astronomy professor Alex Filippenko's lecture on Friday, saying, “All I remember was his excitement. He told us we had to watch it because it wouldn't happen again until 2044.”
Three galleries streamed the event live, with scientists from the Exploratorium traveling to Junction, TX and Dorion, Mexico. One-hour educational programs are offered in English and Spanish.
The Exploratorium was the first museum to webcast live eclipse images from a telescope 25 years ago, and has since partnered with NASA on eclipse expeditions around the world, from Turkey and China to remote Zambia and Micronesia.
Other viewing events were held Monday at the Chabot Science Center in Oakland and Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley.
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