Daytime darkness: wonder and superstition go hand-in-hand for the first total eclipse in years

SCHOOLCHILDREN cheered as the first total eclipse in years plunged Ghana into daytime darkness yesterday, a solar show sweeping northeast from Brazil to Mongolia.

All that could be seen of the sun were the rays of its corona - the usually invisible extended atmosphere of the sun that glowed a dull yellow for three minutes.

Automatic street lights flickered on, authorities sounded whistles and schoolchildren burst into applause across Ghana’s capital, Accra. Many in the country of Christians and Muslims said the event bolstered their faith.

“I believe it’s a wonderful work of God, despite all what the scientists say,” said Solomon Pomenya, a 52-year old doctor. “This tells me that God is a true engineer.”

In Turkey’s Mediterranean town of Side, hundreds of people streamed down a main street to an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Apollo.

Joaquim Boix traveled from Barcelona, Spain, to view the eclipse.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s the colour, the metallic blue-green colour on the skin of the people. The sky with the stars in the background. Usually you watch the stars in a black background ... The background is blue. It’s a special feeling.”

Tens of thousands of tourists were estimated to have visited the Turkish Mediterranean coast, which NASA said would be the best spot to view the eclipse.

In Togo, authorities imported hundreds of thousands of pairs of special glasses that consumers cleared rapidly from shelves in the capital, Lome. The corona’s light can burn eyes.

One Indian paper advised pregnant women not to go outside during the eclipse to avoid having a blind baby or one with a cleft lip.

In Turkey’s earthquake-prone Tokat province, residents set up tents outside despite assurances from scientists that there was no evidence of any link between eclipses and tremors. In August 1999, an earthquake in north-western Turkey killed some 17,000 people just six days after a solar eclipse.

Total eclipses require the tilted orbits of the sun, moon and earth to line up exactly so that the moon obscures the sun completely. The next total eclipse will occur in 2008.