The remote town of Exmouth is plunged into darkness for 58 seconds in the kind of eclipse that happens only once a decade.
Some 20,000 people gathered under cloudless skies in the northwestern Australian coastal city of Exmouth to watch a rare total solar eclipse that plunged the region into darkness for 58 seconds as the moon blotted out the sun.
The remote city of fewer than 3,000 people was one of the best vantage points in Australia to view the eclipse that also crossed Indonesia and East Timor.
An international crowd had been gathering in Exmouth for days, camping in tents and trailers on a red, dusty plain on the outskirts of the city with cameras and other viewing equipment trained skyward.
“Many people become addicted to that minute or so of alien haunting,” said John Lattanzio of the Australian Astronomical Society.
“They become ‘eclipse chasers’ and travel around the world to repeat experiences.”
Totality occurred at 11:29:48 local time (03:29:48 GMT) on Thursday, bringing darkness and an eerie calm, according to those present.
Less than a minute later, the dusty interior was again bathed in light.
NASA astronomer Henry Throop was among those in Exmouth, loudly cheering on the eclipse in the dark.
“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,” the visibly emotional Washington DC resident told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
People in West Papua and East Timor were also able to witness the total eclipse.
In the Indonesian capital, hundreds of people flocked to the Jakarta Planetarium to watch the partial eclipse, which was obscured by clouds.
Azka Azzahra, 21, came with her sister and friends for a closer look using the planetarium’s telescopes.
“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 recited eclipse prayers as a reminder of God’s greatness.
He hybrid solar eclipse it was mostly over water as it followed from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The 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.
The eclipse also gave scientists a chance to look at the sun’s corona, which is normally obscured by its bright rays.
Witnessing a similar eclipse once helped Albert Einstein hypothesize that light can be bent.
Such events occur about once every decade: the last one was in 2013, and the next one isn’t until 2031.
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