Eclipse darkens NW China, a week before Olympics

By Lucy Hornby

JIAYUGUAN, China (Reuters) - Darkness fell over the last outpost of the Great Wall of China on Friday, where a rare total solar eclipse ended its journey across the earth, delighting skywatchers one week before the Olympics open in Beijing.

The stellar spectacle - when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth - began in Canada, tracked across Greenland and crept into Siberia, before ringing in the momentous month of August in China, when it will host the Games.

In northwest China, cheers went up from the Jiayuguan Fort as hordes of tourists welcomed the eclipse.

"It's really doubly special, because I'm standing here on the Great Wall and watching it," said Feng Lei, a backpacker from the China's southwestern province of Sichuan, who was making his way to Beijing for the Olympics.

Eclipses were considered dark omens by ancient Chinese astronomers but many Chinese view this one as particularly fortunate as it comes exactly a week before the torch is lit in Beijing for the opening ceremony of Games designed to restore China's pride and showcase its achievements.

"I have a really deep feeling, especially because it's exactly eight days before the Olympics," said Chuai Rui, college student from Xi'an. Chinese consider eight a lucky number.

In Russia, thousands had flocked from around the world to Novosibirsk, mixing awe with excitement as day turned into night.

All gazed in wonder as an eerie silence descended on the Siberian city and gusts of unusually strong wind tore through the crowd of skywatchers. Birds stopped chirping and the temperature suddenly dropped, a Reuters TV reporter there said.

In Russia's second city of Petersburg, people shouted "Look! Look!" and pointed as the sun's outer corona appeared in the sky.

"You just feel part of nature. ... This is so rare," said Lev, a software specialist in St Petersburg.

Several thousand people turned out at a park in Norway's capital, Oslo, where the eclipse was near 50 percent, to peer up at the sun through dark glasses in cardboard frames and see pictures of the total eclipse beamed onto a large screen from an plane tracking the phenomenon in the Arctic.

Many in the Oslo crowd, which included many families with small children, tried photographing the eclipse, some with their mobile phones pressed against their eclipse sunglasses.

"There's a strange light now," said Norwegian astronomer and popular author Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard as the eclipse progressed and the midday light in Oslo grew slightly dimmer with a silvery sharpness.

"These are historical pictures," he said as real-time photos from a Norwegian air force plane appeared on the big outdoor screen to show the total eclipse from the Arctic.

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