Historic eclipse turns day into night across U.S.
Millions of Americans gazed in wonder through telescopes, cameras and disposable protective glasses Monday as the moon blotted out the sun in the first full-blown solar eclipse to sweep the U.S. from coast to coast in nearly a century.
“It was a very primal experience, it really was,” Julie Vigeland, of Portland, Ore., said after she was moved to tears by the sight of the sun reduced to a silvery ring of light in Salem. “I’ve seen other really magnificent things, but there is nothing, nothing like this. Absolutely nothing.”
The temperature dropped, birds quieted down, crickets chirped and the stars came out in the middle of the day as the line of darkness raced 4,200 kilometres across the continent in about 90 minutes, bringing forth oohs, aahs, shouts and screams.
In Boise, Idaho, where the sun was more than 99 per cent blocked, people clapped and whooped, and the street lights came on briefly, while in Nashville, Tenn., people craned their necks at the sky and knocked back longneck beers at Nudie’s Honky Tonk bar.
Passengers aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean watched it unfold as Bonnie Tyler sang her 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
At the Nashville Zoo, the giraffes and rhinos started running around crazily when the sun came back. Several minorleague baseball teams — one of them, the Columbia Fireflies, outfitted for the day in glow-inthe-dark jerseys — briefly suspended play.
At the White House, despite all the warnings from experts about the risk of eye damage, President Donald Trump took off his eclipse glasses and looked directly at the sun.
It was the most-observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, with many Americans staking out prime viewing spots and settling onto blankets and lawn chairs to watch, especially along the path of totality — the line of deep shadow created when the sun is completely obscured except for the ring of light known as the corona.
The shadow — a corridor just 96 to 113 kilometres wide — came ashore in Oregon and then travelled diagonally across the Midwest to South Carolina, with darkness from the totality lasting only about two to three wondrous minutes in any one spot.
The rest of North America was treated to a partial eclipse, as were Central American and the top of South America.
With 200 million people within a day’s drive from the path of totality, towns and parks saw big crowds.