Eclipse Darkens Part of S. America
As darkness fell at noon Thursday across a slim arc of northern South America, astronomers and tourists marveled at the last total solar eclipse in the Western Hemisphere this century.
Fearful pregnant women avoided looking at the sky or donned protective shawls as the moon blotted out the sun for about four minutes, casting a 93-mile-wide shadow from the Galapagos Islands, off Ecuador, northeastward over parts of northern Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and to the Caribbean sea.
A partial eclipse was seen in a wider area for much longer, starting about 12:30 p.m. in Venezuela and including the southeastern U.S. and central South America. The next visible solar eclipse in the hemisphere will be in 2017.
Along the corridor of darkness, tropical temperatures dropped, while animals were disconcerted by the untimely coming of nightfall.
The phenomenon was best seen in and around Maracaibo, Venezuela, where more than 300 scientists gathered from countries as far away as Russia, India and Japan.
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