Tourists and scientists were gathering at spots around the world for a solar eclipse -- the first total eclipse in years, which swept northeast from Brazil to Mongolia, blotting out the sun across swathes of the world's poorest lands.
The last such eclipse in November 2003 was best viewed from Antarctica, "so it wasn't the easiest eclipse to see," said Alex Young, a NASA scientist involved in solar research.
Yesterday's eclipse blocked the sun in highly populated areas, including West Africa, where governments scrambled to educate people about the dangers of looking at the eclipse without proper eye protection.
In Togo, authorities imported hundreds of thousands of pairs of special glasses that consumers cleared rapidly from shelves in the capital, Lome. But villagers in the interior won't have access to the eyewear and officials called on them to stay home.
"Please, do not go out and keep your children indoors on solar eclipse day," Togo's minister for health said in a message broadcast on state TV.
Day will turn to night in the eclipse's route and a corona -- the usually invisible extended atmosphere of the sun -- will glow around the edges of the moon as it comes between the earth and the sun.
"Imagine if your hair was to stand up from static electricity, that's kind of what the corona looks like all around the sun," NASA's Young said. But the corona's light can burn eyes.
In Ghana, where the effect will be particularly visible, people were buying US$1 "solar shades" -- paper-rimmed glasses with dark plastic lenses that resemble those used for viewing 3-D movies.
Crowds were anticipated in prime viewing points, among them Accra, the capital of Ghana, and in Turkey and India. In Ghana, the University of Cape Coast will broadcast the eclipse simultaneously on the Internet.
NASA said Turkey will be the best spot to view the eclipse, and thousands of tourists were expected along its Mediterranean coast.
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