Longyearbyen - All eyes were on the skies early Friday for a solar eclipse set to offer spectacular views, from selected airplane seats, European countries with the right weather and a remote Arctic archipelago.
Europeans got their first glimpse through cloudy skies in Spain's Canary Islands in the early morning.
"The sky is half clouded over but we are getting short glimpses" of the eclipse, Alfred Rosenberg, an astrophysicist at the Canaries Astrophysics Institute told AFP from the island of Tenerife.
"We can see perfectly well the disc of the moon which is covering the sun. It is very nice. It is one of the most marvellous astronomical spectacles you can see."
A partial eclipse of varying degrees would be visible later, weather permitting, across most of Europe, northern Africa, northwest Asia and the Middle East, before finishing its show close to the North Pole.
Die-hard eclipse junkies have flown in to the Faroe Islands, a Danish autonomous territory, and Norway's Arctic Svalbard archipelago, from around the world to observe the less than three minutes of daytime darkness, a phenomenon that has fascinated mankind since the beginning of time.
More than 8,000 visitors were expected in the Faroes, where the total eclipse began at 9:41 am (0941 GMT), and some 1,500 to 2,000 were expected in Svalbard, where it should start at 11:11 am (1011 GMT).
A group of 50 Danes bought tickets aboard a Boeing 737 chartered by a science magazine to watch the event from the skies above the Faroe Islands.
While they will be shielded from the vagaries of Faroese weather, there are some things they won't get to experience when watching the eclipse from the sky.
"If you're on the ground you can hear the birds behaving differently, and the temperature falls," John Valentin Mikkelsen, a 63-year-old teacher from the Danish city of Aarhus told AFP.
"And maybe we won't get the full view as the windows are quite small," he added.
AFP
