Optometrist Ralph Chou, who had been hoping to see his 19th total solar eclipse, said: “Unfortunately we got nothing because we had rain showers and solid cloud”. They were aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 870 from Anchorage to Honolulu, which had changed its flight plan to intercept the eclipse.
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One of the passengers also brought specially filtered sunglasses for everyone on board. A four-strong team from NASA was in Maba, a small town in the Malukus, to observe the eclipse.
From a festival featuring live bands, to fun runs and traditional dances, events were taking place across Indonesia for an estimated 10,000 foreign visitors and 100,000 domestic tourists witnessing the phenomenon.
The entire eclipse, which began with the first patch of darkness appearing on the edge of the sun, lasted about three hours.
The total eclipse swept across 12 out of 34 provinces in Indonesia, which stretches about 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometres) from east to west, before heading across the Pacific Ocean.
The path the shadow traces after leaving southeast Asia takes it across a few islands in the south Pacific and then into the northern hemisphere, where it will pass north of the Hawaiian islands before slipping off the edge of the planet.
There was also disappointment for a group of six eclipse chasers who had travelled from Canada and the U.S. to Kalimantan.
Total eclipses occur when the moon moves between the Earth and the Sun, and the three bodies align precisely.
“It’s so different to the last eclipse”, he said, “This time the government is giving the public the opportunity to see it and really encouraging us to learn about it. I bought my kids here so they could really experience it”.
“You can’t see the corona that close to the surface with a coronagraph”.
According to Hindu legends, a solar eclipse generates impurities in the environment that have an adverse effect on humans so into the Ganges for a purifying cleanse.
Why are the scientists so interested in this particular eclipse?
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The next total eclipse will occur in August 2017 and be visible over North America.
