Eclipse arcs across Pacific

HANGA ROA, Chile (AFP) – A total solar eclipse drew an 11,000-kilometer (6,800-mile) arc over the Pacific Sunday, plunging remote territories into darkness, but drawing thousands of curious tourists and their dollars.

The skies grew black in the middle of the day as the Moon slipped in front of the Sun and aligned with the Earth, blotting out the sunshine that just moments earlier had swathed the island’s silent, ancient stone guardians.

Applause erupted from thousands of stargazers who began gathering days ago on this remote Chilean outpost for the rare four-minute, 41-second eclipse.

“It was like being in the stadium at night with artificial light. It was like being in a dark room with a 10-watt bulb,” awe-struck local official Francisco Haoa told AFP.

“It started with a shadow. The skies were perfectly blue, with lots of wind that chased away the clouds. Everyone applauded.

“We saw a luminous object near here and people started saying they were sure it was a UFO.”

In Tahiti, where the solar eclipse began its trek, the effect was so stunning that crowds of football-mad Polynesians turned away from the World Cup final on their television screens to look to the skies instead.

“It was like the Sun was smiling,” said eight-year-old Hinanui. “The Sun seemed like a horizontal crescent, then the Moon covered up the bottom of the Sun, which reappeared again as a crescent.”

Opticians and pharmacies sold more than 120,000 pairs of protective eyewear in Tahiti, which has 260,000 inhabitants, and warned of the dangers of vision loss if people looked directly at the eclipse.

Beginning at 1815 GMT, when the umbra or shadow fell about 700 kilometers (440 miles) southeast of Tonga, the eclipse zipped in an easterly arc, cloaking Easter Island at 2011 GMT.

It finished with a pass across southern Chile and Argentina, where it came to an end at 2052 GMT, just before nightfall in Patagonia.

An estimated 4,000 tourists, scientists, photographers, filmmakers and journalists flocked to this World Heritage site of only 160 square kilometers (60 square miles), doubling the barren island’s population.

The Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away. Because of the symmetry, the lunar umbra that falls on the face of the Earth is exactly wide enough to cover the face of the Sun.

Throughout human history, superstition, awe and dread -- fears for the birth or death of kings, victories or defeats, bumper harvests or gnawing hunger -- have attended the moment when the Earth is plunged into daytime darkness.

Easter Island authorities increased security, especially around key heritage sites, including the 3,000 year-old large stone statues, or moai, that put the far-flung ethnic Polynesian islanders on the world culture map.

In local ancient lore, such an eclipse “would have been seen as a very powerful signal of upcoming upheaval,” as their world view was rooted in nature, in “the earth, the sea and especially the sky,” said Patricia Vargas of the University of Chile.

Source: MB