Eclipse fever gripped North America on Monday, as a stunning celestial spectacle fascinated tens of millions of people. The moon’s shadow cast absolute darkness over the Pacific coast of Mexico at 11:07 a.m. local time (1807 GMT), then swept across the United States at supersonic speed, returning to the ocean over Canada’s Atlantic coast just under an hour and a half after landfall.
Festivals, viewing parties, and even mass weddings were held along the eclipse’s path of totality
Festivals, viewing parties, and even mass weddings were held along the eclipse’s path of totality, where the sun’s corona blazed from behind the moon in a spectacular show that wowed people.
“It was spectacular. I had never witnessed anything like it,” said Paulina Nava, 36, a resident of Mazatlan, a beachfront Mexican city.
“People screamed, they applauded, some were taking photos, others were kissing,” she said. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who visited the city, described the occasion as a “very beautiful, unforgettable day.”
Thousands of miles away, in downtown Montreal, Canada, office workers came out of towers to take photos with eclipse glasses held up to their phones.
Hotels and rentals in good viewing areas were booked months in advance
According to NASA, the path of totality was 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide and home to almost 32 million Americans, with an additional 150 million living less than 200 miles from the strip.
Hotels and short-term rentals in good viewing areas were booked solid months in advance in states such as Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, and Maine.
Despite the cloudy conditions, eclipse observers from all around the world gathered in Ingram, Texas, at Stonehenge II Park, a replica of England’s prehistoric monument.
In Russellville, Arkansas, over 300 couples reportedly exchanged vows during the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” mass wedding ceremony.
Delta Airlines has scheduled two special flights along the path, while several schools in the area were closed for the day.
The eclipse was also a boon for scientists. NASA launched three sounding rockets before, during, and immediately following the eclipse to study changes in the ionosphere, an upper layer of the atmosphere vital for long-distance radio transmission.
It also provided an excellent opportunity to investigate the sun’s corona, the outer layer of its atmosphere that is ordinarily obscured by the dazzling glare of the surface but has a significant impact on everything from satellites to power grids.