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A total solar eclipse on Wednesday swept across a narrow swathe of Asia, where hundreds of millions of people watched the skies darken, though in some places thick summer clouds blocked the sun.
The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century cut through the world's most populous nations, India and China, as it travelled half the globe. It was visible along a roughly 250 km-wide (155 miles) corridor, U.S. space agency NASA said.
In India, where eclipse superstitions are rife, people snaked through the narrow lanes of the ancient Hindu holy city of Varanasi and gathered for a dip in the Ganges, a superstition believed to "bring release from the cycle of life and death."
Amid chanting of Hindu hymns, thousands of men, women and children waded into the river with folded hands and prayed to the sun as it emerged in an overcast sky.
But for one 80-year-old woman the trip was fatal. Police said she died from suffocation in the crowd of hundreds of thousands that had gathered to bathe in the Ganges.
The eclipse next swept through Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and over the crowded cities along China's Yangtze River, before heading to the Pacific.
In Hindu-majority Nepal, the government declared Wednesday a public holiday and thousands headed for water.
In central China crowds gathered along the high dykes of the industrial city of Wuhan, roaring and waving goodbye as the last sliver of sun disappeared, plunging the city into darkness, although clouds cheated them of part of the spectacle.
Studying sun's corona
Eclipses allow earth-bound scientists a rare glimpse of the sun's corona, the gases surrounding the sun, and this year there will be extra time for study.
Scientists in China planned to snap two-dimensional images of the sun's corona -- up to 2 million degrees Celsius (3.6 million F) hot -- at roughly one image per second, Bhatt said.
The eclipse lasted up to a maximum of 6 minutes, 39 seconds over the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA.
PHOTO CAPTION
A total solar eclipse is seen in Varanasi, India, Wednesday, July 22, 2009.
Reuters
