MEXICO: Thousands flocked for a glimpse of the solar eclipse yesterday, with the most intrepid enthusiasts swooning over spectacular sights in a frozen Arctic archipelago and aboard a plane above remote Nordic islands.
A group of 50 die-hard Danish eclipse watchers paid $2,261 to watch the event miles above the Faeroe Islands from a Boeing 737 chartered by a science magazine.
‘It was so beautiful, I think it was the most beautiful solar eclipse I’ve ever seen,’ John Valentin Mikkelsen, a 63-year-old teacher from the Danish city of Aarhus, said.
‘We saw Baily’s beads,’ he said, referring to a light show caused by the moon’s rugged surface allowing sunlight to shine through in some places during a total eclipse.
‘It was beautiful, it was awesome,’ he added, with almost spiritual reverence.
The Faeroe Islands and Norway’s Arctic Svalbard archipelago were the only places on Earth where the less than three-minute total eclipse was visible. More than 8,000 tourists had gathered in the Fareoes, a Danish autonomous territory in the North Atlantic.
The views were equally breathtaking in remote Svalbard’s main town Longyearbyen, where the population of 2,000 had tripled ahead of the event.
An eclipse of varying degrees was first visible across northern Africa, most of Europe, northwest Asia and then the Middle East.
In the Swedish capital Stockholm, a watery crescent-shaped sun peered through overcast skies as temperatures dropped.In many places observers were disappointed by the grey skies that marred the view.
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