‘Mind-Blowing’ Solar Eclipse Amazes Viewers in Australia and Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Under clear skies, 20,000 eclipse chasers gathered at a small outpost to watch a rare solar eclipse that plunged part of Australia’s northwest coast into brief midday darkness Thursday as it cooled temporarily. tropical heat.

The remote resort town of Exmouth, with fewer than 3,000 people, was touted as one of Australia’s best vantage points for viewing the eclipse that also traversed remote parts of Indonesia and East Timor.

An international crowd had been gathering for days, camping in tents and trailers on a red, dusty plain on the outskirts of the city with cameras and other viewing equipment pointed skyward.

NASA astronomer Henry Throop was among those cheering loudly in the darkness at Exmouth. “Isn’t it amazing? This is so fantastic. It was amazing. It was so sharp and so bright. There you could see the corona around the sun,” said the visibly emotional Washington resident.

“It only lasts a minute, but it really felt like a long time. There’s nothing else you can see that looks like it. It was just amazing. Spectacular. And then you could see Jupiter and Mercury and be able to see them at the same time during the day, even seeing Mercury is pretty rare. So that was just amazing,” Throop added.

First-time eclipse chaser Julie Copson, who traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) north from the west coast Australian port city of Fremantle to Exmouth, said the phenomenon left her skin tingling. .

“I feel so emotional, like I could cry. The color changed and seeing the corona and the sun flares…” Copson said.

“It was very strong and the temperature dropped a lot,” he added, referring to a sudden drop in temperature of 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) from 29 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit) as the shadow of the moon engulfed the region. .

It was the fifth eclipse for Detroit resident Shane Varrti, who began planning his trip to Exmouth a year ago.

“It’s very exciting. All this effort has paid off,” Varrti said.

In the Indonesian capital, hundreds of people flocked to the Jakarta Planetarium to watch the partial eclipse that was obscured by clouds.

Azka Azzahra, 21, came with her sister and friends for a closer look using the telescopes with hundreds of other visitors.

“I’m still happy to come even though it’s cloudy. It is happy to see how enthusiastically people come here to see the eclipse, because it is rare,” said Azzahra.

The call to prayer resounded from the city’s mosques as the eclipse phase began as Muslims in the country with the world’s largest Muslim population said eclipse prayers as a reminder of God’s greatness.

In East Timor, people gathered around the beach in Lautem township, hoping to witness the rare solar eclipse through their eclipse glasses. Some of them came from other countries and met with the locals to get a clear view of the eclipse.

“Timor Leste is one of the only countries where the experience is less humid, less cloudy, so we expect a clear sky, that is why many international astronomers want to converge here. We hope there will be clear skies,” said Zahri Bin Ahmad, an astrophile with Brunei’s Southeast Asia Astronomy Network as they waited for Thursday.

People cheered as the sun and moon reached their maximum eclipse.

“This is a very new natural phenomenon for Timor Leste. It is very important for us to be able to see and experience it first hand,” said Martinho Fatima, an officer with the civil protection authority.

He hybrid solar eclipse tracked from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and was mostly over water. The lucky few people in its path saw the darkness of a total eclipse or “ring of fire” as the sun peeked out from behind the new moon.

Such celestial events happen about once every decade: the last one was in 2013, and the next one isn’t until 2031. They happen when Earth is in the “sweet spot,” so the moon and sun are almost exactly the same size at the sky, said NASA solar expert Michael Kirk.

At some points, the moon is a little closer and blocks the sun in a total eclipse. But when the moon is a little further away, it lets some of the sunlight peek through in an annular eclipse.

“It’s a crazy phenomenon,” Kirk said. “You’re actually watching the moon get bigger in the sky.”

Several other upcoming solar eclipses will be easier to catch. A annular eclipse in mid-October and a total eclipse in April 2024 both will cross millions of people in the Americas.

Burakoff reported from New York. Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia contributed to this report.

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