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When day became night

MOSCOW: An enormous swath of western Siberia was submerged in darkness on Friday afternoon as the moon completely blocked the sun, enrapturing huge crowds of Russians and foreign tourists.

The peak of the eclipse occurred in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city. There, forecasts of cloudy skies proved wrong, and tens of thousands of people who had flocked to the centre of the town were able to observe the rare total eclipse of the sun — which lasted two minutes, 23 seconds — in its full beauty.

Traffic stopped. Crowds cheered and whistled as the moon covered the sun, the wind died and day became night. The eclipse began in Arctic Canada, then passed through Greenland, western Siberia, Mongolia and China.

According to NASA, the next total eclipse will occur on July 22, 2009, starting in India and moving across Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China and over the Pacific Ocean. — AP

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