A total solar eclipse on Wednesday swept across a narrow swathe of Asia, where hundreds of millions of people watched the skies darken, though in some places thick summer clouds blocked the sun.

The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century cut through the world's most populous nations, India and China, as it travelled half the globe. It was visible along a roughly 250 km-wide 155 miles corridor, U.S. space agency NASA said.

In India, where eclipse superstitions are rife, people snaked through the narrow lanes of the ancient Hindu holy city of Varanasi and gathered for a dip in the Ganges, an act believed to bring release from the cycle of life and death.

Amid chanting of Hindu hymns, thousands of men, women and children waded into the river with folded hands and prayed to the sun as it emerged in an overcast sky.

"We have come here because our elders told us this is the best time to improve our afterlife," said Bhailal Sharma, a villager from central India traveling in a group of about 100.

But for one 80-year-old woman the trip was fatal. Police said she died from suffocation in the crowd of hundreds of thousands that had gathered to bathe in the Ganges.

The eclipse next swept through Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and over the crowded cities along China's Yangtze River, before heading to the Pacific.

In Hindu-majority Nepal, the government declared Wednesday a public holiday and thousands headed for water.

"Taking a dip in holy rivers before and after the eclipse salvages and protects us from disasters and calamities," said 86-year-old Sundar Shrestha, who had come to the holy Bagmati river with six children and grand children.

In central China crowds gathered along the high dykes of the industrial city of Wuhan, roaring and waving goodbye as the last sliver of sun disappeared, plunging the city into darkness, although clouds cheated them of part of the spectacle.

"As soon as the totality happened, the clouds closed in so we couldn't see the corona. That's a pity," said Zhen Jun, a man whose work unit had given him the day off to enjoy the spectacle.

But eclipse viewers in central China were luckier than those in the coastal cities near Shanghai, where overcast skies and rain in some places blocked the view of the sun entirely.

STUDYING SUNS'S CORONA

Eclipses allow earth-bound scientists a rare glimpse of the sun's corona, the gases surrounding the sun, and this year there will be extra time for study.

"This is indeed quite an important event for scientific experiments. Its long duration provides you an opportunity to make very complicated, complex experiments," said Harish Bhatt, dean at the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics.

Scientists in China planned to snap two-dimensional images of the sun's corona -- up to 2 million degrees Celsius 3.6 million F hot -- at roughly one image per second, Bhatt said.

The eclipse lasted up to a maximum of 6 minutes, 39 seconds over the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA.

Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma, Matthias Williams, Bappa Majumdar and James Pomfret; Writing by Matthias Williams and Lucy Hornby; Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Alex Richardson





loaded with International Space Station parts out of the shuttle. AP Photo/NASA

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