Many lucky people around the world were treated to a an unusual “hybrid” solar eclipse today — so called because the extent to which the Sun was blocked out varied around the world. Those along North America’s east coast and the northern half of South America saw a brilliant Sun partially eclipsed by the Moon just at dawn, as in our lead image from South Carolina, USA. But regions like equatorial Africa had a total eclipsed Sun for about a minute, while those in southern Europe, the Middle East, were able to see an “annular” or partial, eclipse. This type of variable eclipse is rare — the last time one occurred was Nov. 20, 1854 and the next one won’t happen until Oct. 17, 2172! This was also the last eclipse of the year, and photographers were out to capture the views.
UPDATE: We’ve now added more images, including this new one from Uganda that shows totality:
See more below, and we’ll continue to add images as they come in.
Here’s a gorgeous timelapse by Steve Ellington, who shot this from the US east coast:
The following two images were sent to us by Victor Pinheiro from Espargos, Sal Island, one of 10 islands that make up the Republic of Cabo Verde, in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometers off the coast of Western Africa. Africa had some of the best views of the eclipse, with some areas seeing totality.
The image above and below were captured by Gadi Eidelheit from Israel. You can see his entire collection of images from the eclipse at his website.
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