Thousands crowd UNF campus with eyes on the sky for the solar eclipse

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Today’s solar eclipse brought huge crowds to the University of North Florida’s watch party this afternoon.

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<

Action News Jax had a crew at the watch party, bringing you live coverage throughout the day as thousands of people flooded the campus to see the eclipse. Our crews handed out more than 5,000 pairs of eclipse glasses, many of which were turned to the sky when the eclipse peaked shortly after 3:00 PM.

[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]

The free city-wide watch party was put together by a group of students with UNF’s astronomy club, some of which say seeing the eclipse was one of the best moments of their lives.

“Space is just cool,” says Gabrielle Forbes, a sophomore astrophysics major at UNF and member of the astronomy club, “like, I feel like we can all agree, to some capacity, space is cool.”

The students say they’ve been working for months to prepare for the watch party, their first total eclipse event in years and the last they’ll see in decades.

RELATED: Solar eclipse 2024: As it happened

“I think it’s the coolest thing ever and the best thing I can do with my time, personally,” says Jessi Skaggs, a senior physics major at UNF and president of the astronomy club.

Whether cool or not, anyone could see the fun even without all the sun, especially the people who stayed on campus for hours to see the eclipse.

“I’m just a huge astronomy nerd,” says Freddy Polo, who came to watch the eclipse with his family, “the next one isn’t for a long time from now, so it’s nice to enjoy it while we can.”

The Action News Jax First Alert Weather team says the next total eclipse will be in 2045, 21 years from now.

Even though the Jacksonville area only saw a partial eclipse, Action News Jax has been gathering pictures and video from both local viewers and from where it was seen as a total eclipse in other parts of the country. You can find it all right now by clicking here.

[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.