Pictures of eclipse from round the world

The faithful said prayers and astronomers and thrill-seekers gazed into the sky as the moon turned day into night in a total eclipse of the sun that cut halfway round the world today.

Carving a narrow path over northwest Africa and parts of the Middle East, the eclipse expired on the steppes of the Russo-Mongolian frontier three hours and 9,000 miles after it began in northeast Brazil.

"It was so good, it gave me goose pimples," said Julio Paredes, a pizzeria manager from Madrid who travelled specially to Side, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, to watch the phenomenon. "I’ve waited for so long for this moment, and perhaps it was all the better because of that."

But for Ramatoutou, a farmer in the Niger village of Kareygourou, the event was an ill omen."What a disaster, the sun has disappeared!" he exclaimed, as children and a group of expatriates from the nearby capital Niamey looked upward. "I hope God will protect us."

The fourth total eclipse of the 21st century began soon after dawn over the far northeastern Brazilian city of Natal when, at 5:49 am (0849 GMT), the sun disappeared for 10 minutes and it was night again.

Moving at dizzying speed, the lunar shadow reached Ghana at 0910 GMT, where sirens sounded as the capital Accra plunged into darkness for two and a half minutes. "I’m so emotional. And I’m also happy because now I’ll be able to say to my grandchildren: ’I was there’," said Sylvia Boateng, 35, in Accra.

Countries lying directly under the path, thus able to see a total eclipse, were Brazil, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Libya, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, where it ended at 1148 GMT.

Observers 1,500 miles either side of that path saw a partial eclipse, with a fifth of the sun obscured in Britain, southern Sweden and the southern Gulf and up to 80 per cent in parts of the Middle East.

Authorities pulled out all the stops to promote the event and draw tourists and eclipse junkies. Togo declared a national holiday. Libya, until recently an international pariah, relaxed entry rules to allow in at least 7,000 observers from 47 different countries, and granted special permission for telescopes.

The total eclipse reached its peak in Libya, lasting four minutes and seven seconds there. Prayers were said in mosques there and in Niger, where Sheikh Amadou Yahaya, a senior cleric, said eclipses"are omens, a call to order."

In Iraq, national television carried pictures of the partial eclipse while in the southern port city of Basra, the faithful went to mosques for a special prayer, called Salat al-Qusuf. Eclipses are revered in Islam as proof of God’s control over the moon and sun.

The only part of the European Union to lie on the path of totality was the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo, just off the coast of Turkey. Some 3,000 people - an unprecedented influx onto the island, where hotel rooms had been booked up to three years in advance - watched it there, while cameras relayed the images to a giant screen in central Athens.

Applause broke out as the screen showed the total eclipse at 1453 GMT.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and his wife - wearing special glasses to filter out the ultraviolet light - and several thousand tourists converged at Al-Salloum, near the border with Libya.

Eclipses should never be viewed without good optical filters as ultraviolet light, which is invisible to the human eye, can burn the retina even when the sun is covered. Countries on the eclipse's path had imported millions of glasses to tackle the risk, and Jordan and Lebanon closed schools for the day out of concern.

But in northern Turkey, hundreds of people were camping out in tents after an academic claimed the eclipse would be followed by a severe earthquake with an epicentre near the town of Niksar. Niksar’s deputy mayor said some nearby villages were 80 per cent empty.

"We will continue to live in tents for two more months after the eclipse," said Mustafa Hasta, an elderman from Yolkonak village now sharing a tent with six relatives.

The next eclipse will be on August 1, 2008 and will stretch across parts of North America, Europe and Asia.

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