Moscow/Beijing - Thousands of eclipse chasers were in
Siberia and China's far west on Friday to experience day turning to
night when the moon's shadow covered over the sun for a chill of up
to 140 seconds.
The total solar eclipse, sliding over the globe at a speed of
2,000 kilometres per hour, rose in the Arctic, crossing over central
Russia to set in Mongolia and western China on Friday.
'Awesome,' British teacher Kath Naday said by telephone after
watching the eclipse through special glasses in the remote Chinese
county of Yiwu, in the central Asian region of Xinjiang.
Naday said many of viewers were concerned about cloud obscuring
the sun until the cloud cleared just a few minutes before the total
eclipse began at 6:59 pm (1059 GMT).
'It was perfect,' she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'It was
like dusk and dawn (together).'
Naday's friend Ed Jocelyn said the duration of the total eclipse
was the 'best 1 minute, 50 seconds' of his life.
State media said some 30,000 tourists flocked to Yiwu for the
eclipse, including 2,500 foreigners, although Naday said the crowd
seemed smaller.
The Russian polar city of Nadym was the first to experience the
eclipse, at its peak length of 2 minutes and 27 seconds of darkness.
But most eclipse pilgrims gathered in Russia's third largest city
of Novosibirsk, which lies directly in the arc of the eclipse. Over
15,000 hobby astronomers flooded the city this week, news agency
RIA-Novosti reported.
The city's 87 hotels have been fully booked since 2003, and
authorities set up tent camps to provide for the influx of people,
the agency said.
Weather forecasts were predicting overcast skies Friday, but
authorities in Novosibirsk were nonetheless distributing special
paper specs to prevent eye damage caused by direct viewing of the
sun.
Experts estimated that the eclipse is a once-in-300-year event in
Novosibirsk, where the solar blackout is set to last 2 minutes and 20
seconds, but the phenomenon occurs worldwide about every 18 months.
At totality, the sun appears as a glowing halo, the temperature
will drop in a matter of minutes and it is possible to see stars in
broad daylight.
A partial eclipse will be visible in Moscow, about 2,000
kilometres east of Siberia's hub city, where a maximum of 58 per cent
of the sun will be obscured at 1408 Moscow time (1108 GMT).
Another solar eclipse won't be seen in Russia until 2030, while
the next total eclipse will be over North America in 2017.
A solar eclipse will be visible in Shanghai and other parts of
China next year.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story