Total Solar Eclipse Races Across North America
MESQUITE, Texas (NEWSnet/AP) — A chilly, midday darkness fell across North America on Monday as a total solar eclipse raced across the continent, thrilling those lucky enough to behold the spectacle through clear skies.
Eclipse mania gripped Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, as the moon swept in front of the sun, blotting out daylight. Almost everyone in North America was guaranteed at least a partial eclipse, weather permitting.
It was the continent’s biggest eclipse audience ever, with a couple hundred million people living in or near the shadow’s path, plus scores of out-of-towners flocking in.
Clouds blanketed most of Texas as the total solar eclipse began its diagonal dash across land, starting along Mexico’s mostly clear Pacific coast and aiming for Texas and 14 other U.S. States, before exiting into the North Atlantic near Newfoundland.
Arkansas and northeast New England were the best bets in the U.S., going into Monday’s spectacle. New Brunswick and Newfoundland in Canada also looked promising.
The show got underway in the Pacific before noon EDT. As the darkness of totality reached the Mexican resort city of Mazatlán, the faces of spectators were illuminated only by the screens of their cellphones.
During Monday’s full eclipse, the moon slipped right in front of the sun, entirely blocking it. The resulting twilight, with only the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona visible, would be long enough for birds and other animals to fall silent, and for planets, stars and maybe even a comet to pop out.
The out-of-sync darkness lasts up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds. That’s almost twice as long as it was during the U.S. coast-to-coast eclipse seven years ago because the moon is closer to Earth. It will be another 21 years before the U.S. sees another total solar eclipse on this scale.
It will take just 1 hour, 40 minutes for the moon’s shadow to race more than 4,000 miles across the continent.
Eye protection is needed with proper eclipse glasses and filters to look at the sun, except when it ducks completely out of sight during an eclipse.
The path of totality — approximately 115 miles wide — encompasses several major cities this time, including Dallas; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Buffalo, New York; and Montreal. An estimated 44 million people live within the track, with a couple hundred million more within 200 miles.
NEWSnet Field Reports
Washington Correspondent David Ade was in Washington, D.C., as people gathered on the National Mall to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse:
NEWSnet Digital Content Manager Paula Wethington took the photo below at 3:14 p.m. in Fremont, Ohio:
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