Pacific witnesses rare total solar eclipse
![The rare eclipse viewed from Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. [AFP]](http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201007/r599283_3888964.jpg "The rare eclipse viewed from Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. [AFP]")
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The rare eclipse viewed from Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. [AFP]
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Thousands of stargazers have observed a total solar eclipse making an 11,000-kilometre arc over the Pacific, plunging remote islands into darkness.
The display came to a climax on Easter Island.
The skies grew black in the middle of the day as the moon slipped in front of the sun and aligned with Earth.
Applause erupted from thousands of stargazers who began gathering days ago on the remote Chilean outpost for the rare eclipse.
The phenomenon was visible for less than five minutes from a small section of the globe - east of Tonga to the southern parts of Chile and Argentina.
The curator of the Brisbane Planetarium, Mark Rigby, travelled to Easter Island to witness the event.
He said it drew a "beautiful diamond ring and the corona around that absolutely clear".
In the South Pacific, about 5,000 astronomers, other eclipse-chasers and tourists were on the Tuamotus, an archipelago of sparsely-populated atolls, east of Tahiti.
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