'Blazing ring' eclipse races across Africa, Asia

The spectacle, visible in a roughly 300-kilometer (185-mile) band running 12,900 kilometers (8,062 miles) across the globe, set a record for the longest annular eclipse that will remain unbeaten for more than a thousand years.

An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun but does not completely obscure it, thus leaving a ring — an annulus — of sunlight flaring around the lunar disk.

The Moon's shadow first struck the southwestern tip of Chad and western Central African Republic at 0514 GMT and then reached Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia before racing across India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and China.

(...) In India, where the eclipse was visible from the southern-most tip, astronomers and curious spectators watched in awe, using sunglasses and even ultra-dark welding masks as day turned into darkness.

There were cheers and applause in the city of Bangalore when clouds cleared just in time to show the Moon glide into position to cover about 85 percent of the Sun.





(...) The eclipse, which was followed live on cable television in India and China, temporarily put a halt to the world's biggest religious gathering in northern India.

Temples in Haridwar, site of the Kumbh Mela which sees millions of Hindus bathe in the holy river Ganges, were closed for the duration of the eclipse because the phenomenon is considered inauspicious, an organizer told AFP.

Residents in the Ugandan capital Kampala got a good view, although some were afraid of the intensity of the light, with many sharing dark glasses to gaze up at the sky.

(...) The maximum duration of "annularity" — the time the moon is in front of the sun — was 11 minutes, eight seconds at 0706 GMT, making it "the longest annular eclipse of the 3rd Millennium," according to NASA.

Only on December 23, 3043 will this record be beaten.

In China's capital, Beijing, a partial eclipse made a crescent of the setting orange sun before the lunar shadow expired over the Shandong peninsula at 0859 GMT.