Total solar eclipse: millions watched rare spectacle as moon blocked sun in Mexico, US and Canada – as it happened (2024)

They say bats come out during a solar eclipse, and owls too. Hippos have been seen to move towards their nighttime feeding grounds, bees to fly back to their hives and refuse to emerge until the sun comes back out, crickets begin to chirrup, mosquitoes come out for the evening, spiders take down their webs to protect them from the nighttime dew.

Last time they had a solar eclipse one around these parts, scientists working at Riverbanks zoo over in South Carolina noticed that the gibbons started barking and a pair of Galapagos tortoises immediately began mating with each other.

During this one, the fauna around and about Augusta National was acting unusually, too. Novel behaviours included patrons gathering together away from the shade and craning their necks to stare up into the blue spring sky. There were also sudden, and repeated, oaths, sighs, and other unusual utterances. “OH MY GOD! IT’S HAPPENING!” cried a man in the grandstand down at Amen Corner when the moon took its first little nibble out of the sun’s bottom corner.

“Ninety minutes till the end of the world,” said someone else, who was sitting a couple of rows behind him. “Well,” his deadpan friend said, “I can think of worse ways to spend it.”

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A video posted by Nasa showed the view of the eclipse from the International Space Station, where expedition 71 crew members orbited 260 miles (418km) above south-eastern Canada as the moon’s umbra was moving from New York state into Newfoundland.

Caitlin Ray, an 11th grade student from El Paso, was on a campus visit at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, just in time for totality.

On the campus, students and families from the surrounding neighborhoods filled the campus’s main quad to stare skyward. Ray said she hoped to study astronomy, and was excited for the scientific possibilities the eclipse provides.

“I’m especially excited to see the corona and see if it’s going to be circular,” Ray said.

If it is, that means that there is a lot of solar activity, and there’s a lot of research that can come from that.

Clouds blocked the sun for much of the partial eclipse, but – like elsewhere in north Texas – parted just before totality. Alongside oohs and aahs, people cheered and sang God Bless America. Nikhil Kathuria, an SMU junior studying finance, said:

This was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen.

Delta Air Lines ran two special eclipse-viewing flights for those who wanted to spent as much time as possible directly within the path of totality.

The flights departed from Austin, Texas, and landed in Detroit, Michigan, and were timed to give passengers the best chance of safely viewing the solar eclipse at its peak.

The first flight sold out in 24 hours, the airlines said, prompting it to add a second.

Millions of people across 15 US states, and in Mexico and Canada, witnessed the rare and ethereal spectacle of a total solar eclipse on Monday, with cities plunged into sudden darkness and experiencing a precipitous drop in temperatures.

• It was North America’s first total eclipse since 2017. The next coast-to-coast total eclipse in the US is in 2045.

• The solar eclipse made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast at 11:07am PT. Mexico’s beachside resort town of Mazatlán was the first major viewing spot along the path of totality.

• Clouds blanketed most of Texas as the total solar eclipse began its path across the US. The weather cooperated at the last minute just east of Dallas and near Austin, where crowds cheered and whistled as the clouds parted in the final minutes before totality.

• The path of totality encompassed many major cities including Dallas; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Buffalo, New York; and Montreal. About 32 million people in the US live within the path of totality but nearly everyone in North America was guaranteed at least a partial eclipse, weather permitting.

• Nearly 400 couples tied the knot in the shadow of the moon in a mass wedding event in Russellville, Arkansas.

• At Niagara Falls, hundreds dressed in costumes to look like the sun to view the eclipse next to the roaring waterfall.

• The moon’s shadow exited continental North America in Newfoundland.

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, were among the millions of people who watched the eclipse.

At the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, players and fans were able to get a good look at the solar eclipse.

Georgia was not in the path of totality but experienced a partial eclipse as the sun shone brightly.

“This is timing up pretty good,” said British Open champion Brian Harman, who was playing the back nine during the height of the eclipse, AP reported.

Get to watch the end of the world at Augusta National.

Ignas Barauskas almost missed it.

He bought plane tickets from his home in Lithuania to the United States about a month ago. After a series of flight delays, he landed in Dallas around midnight, ready for a once-in-a-lifetime total eclipse of the sun.

“I probably wouldn’t have come to Dallas if it hadn’t been for the total solar eclipse,” Barauskas said.

It seems like it will be a grand event, the sun hiding away during the day.

On Monday morning he took public transit – because all rental cars had been booked in the city for months – to Dallas’s White Rock Lake, arriving moments before the partial eclipse started. All morning he and millions of other umbraphiles, or eclipse chasers, worried about the gloomy forecast of thick clouds.

But then, just before the total eclipse began, the clouds parted. The view of the sun’s brilliant corona left the city in evening-like darkness for as much as four minutes. Barauskas said:

Everyone was screaming. Like a concert.

Barauskas was among the millions who traveled to the path of totality that stretched from western Mexico to Newfoundland on Monday – much of it under lingering cloudy skies.

The Dallas-Fort Worth region was the largest metropolitan area on the path of totality for Monday’s total solar eclipse, making north Texas a major destination and creating potential headaches for locals. The cloudy weather left some scrambling at the last minute to change plans and head for clearer skies, but for much of north Texas totality itself was clear. Barauskas said:

Better than all expectations.

Totality ended in Newfoundland, Canada, at 3:46pm ET. The eclipse has now exited continental North America.

The clouds thickened as the moon passed in front of the sun here in Saratoga Springs, in upstate New York, so I was glad to have eclipse glasses with 2x magnification and could still see the orange segment of the sun become an orange sliver and finally a fingernail as the height of the phenomenon occurred.

A dusk-like gloom descended on the park where several hundred people, mostly locals, were craning skyward, and a hush descended as the shadows of people and trees became ghostly and then disappeared in the gloom, with some oohs and aahs.

Suddenly, mosquitoes appeared and started biting, as if it actually were night approaching.

It didn’t go completely dark as we’re a little out of the band of totality, but it was a surreal experience and now folks are folding up their picnic blankets and going on about their days, as blue skies return and the clouds clear somewhat. Well worth it.