Astronomers, thrill-seekers and the religious looked on in awe as day turned into night Wednesday on a path that stretched halfway round the world.
The regions able to view the total eclipse spanned from eastern Brazil, across the Atlantic to northern Africa. It then continued through the Middle East, central Asia, western China and ended in Mongolia.
Observers 2,500 kilometers either side saw a partial eclipse, with a fifth of the sun obscured in Britain but up to 80 percent in the southern Gulf.
Phenomenon
It first began after dawn over the far northeastern Brazilian city of Natal when, at 5:49 am (0849 GMT), the sun disappeared for 10 minutes.
Shortly after 9 o’clock GMT, Ghana’s capital Accra plunged into darkness for two and a half minutes as the lunar shadow reached there.
"This shows the greatness of God. This shows the greatness of Nature. It is very, very beautiful," said Ghanaian Nana Appah at Cape Coast beach, the first spot where the event was easily visible.
Julio Paredes traveled from Madrid to Turkey's Mediterranean coast to watch the spectacle. "It was so good, it gave me goose pimples," he said.
Other observers were wary of the eclipse seeing it as a sign of divine might. Ramatoutou, a farmer in the Niger village of Karey Gourou, said it was a bad omen. "What a disaster, the sun has disappeared!" he exclaimed. "I hope God will protect us."
Niger's Maradi region, mosques filled with people reading the Koran and praying. "The eclipse only happens when God is angry with us and wants to prove his might," one Muslim scholar said on local radio.
Best spot
Observers in Libya's Wao Namus settlement near the Chadian border 2,000 kilometres south of Tripoli, had the longest view of the solar eclipse, four minutes and seven seconds.
Usually tightly controlling international visitors, the Libyan government relaxed entry rules to allow in at least 7,000 observers from 47 different countries, and granted special permission for telescopes.
Just across the border with Libya, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his wife joined locals and several thousand tourists at Al-Salloum and watched the eclipse wearing special glasses to filter out the ultraviolet light.
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.
Some observers took precautions, watching the event reflected on windows or in buckets of water, or staring through the tiny hole in computer disks.