A solar eclipse captivated millions of people in North America this Monday (04/08/2024), from Mexico, where it began, to Canada, where the rare phenomenon left city after city in darkness in its wake.
The shadow of the Moon plunged the Pacific coast of Mexico into total darkness at 11:07 local time (18:07 GMT) and crossed the United States, before returning to the ocean over the Atlantic coast of Canada just under an hour and a half later. touching earth.
Festivals, parties and even mass weddings were held along the eclipse’s “path of totality”, in which the Moon completely obscures the Sun for a few minutes.
In Mexico City, people gathered around the emblematic Angel of Independence to watch a partial occultation, while President Andrés López Obrador witnessed the total eclipse in the coastal city of Mazatlán, the first point on land where the sun It became a crown of fire around the moon, a phenomenon that will not occur again in that place for 300 years.
Phenomenon moved millions of tourists
In the United States, the eclipse path included a region where nearly 32 million Americans live. Another 150 million live within 320 km of the strip and those further away enjoyed a partial eclipse or followed an Internet broadcast provided by NASA.
“It was great. “I loved it,” said Gary Christensen, a lawyer who traveled from the state of Oregon to the small town of Ingram, Texas, where despite the cloudy sky the phenomenon could be seen.
Thousands of miles away, in downtown Montreal, Canada, office workers emerged from skyscrapers to take photos with their eclipse glasses attached to their phones.
“My heart was beating very fast,” summarized Erica Park, 26 years old.
Companies took advantage of the anticipation with special events, while hotels and short-term rentals in prime locations to view the eclipse have been sold out for months.
«We have people from all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii. “There are tourists from the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Israel, New Zealand,” said Jennyth Peterson, events manager at Stonehenge II Park in Ingram, Texas, where there is a replica of the prehistoric structure from England.
The eclipse could also be admired from the air: Delta airlines planned two special flights along the path, while many schools in the area closed for the entire day.
Astronauts on the International Space Station saw the Moon’s shadow sweeping across the Earth’s surface.
The event was also of scientific interest. NASA planned to launch three small sounding rockets before, during and just after the eclipse from Virginia, in the eastern United States.
The objective: to measure the changes caused by darkness in the upper part of the Earth’s atmosphere, the ionosphere, through which a large part of the communication signals pass.
A total eclipse occurs when the Moon is located exactly between the Earth and the Sun, temporarily blocking its light in broad daylight. The Sun is about 400 times larger than the Moon, but it is 400 times farther away, so they both appear similar in size.
The next total eclipse visible in the United States (excluding Alaska) will take place in 2044. Before that, there will be a total eclipse in Spain, in 2026.
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