Millions of people in America are witnessing a rare solar eclipse that embraces the sky from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, for the first time in 99 years.
The air temperature in Oregon dropped significantly as the moon moved to cover the sun.
An estimated 200 million people on Monday are on a one-day eclipse path, stretching from Oregon on the Pacific Coast, across the heart of America, all the way to South Carolina on the Atlantic Coast.
Towns and parks along the path of the eclipse has been preparing for the flood of visitors with telescopes and cameras and special glasses to see the phenomenon that is expected to be the US space agency's most widely observed eclipses and immortalized in history.
More than 100,000 people gathered in the town of Madras with a population of 7,000 people in the state of Oregon, one of the first places to pass this solar eclipse. According to the Los Angeles Times, the National Guard has been deployed to handle traffic jams in Madras.
The total eclipse lasted longest near Carbondale, Illinois, for 2 minutes and 44 seconds.
Hundreds of people lined up outside the museum to use the telescope to see a partial eclipse in Washington state.
The first city to experience a total eclipse is Lincoln Beach, Oregon, at 10:16 am Pacific time and last, Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:48 pm Eastern American coast time.
The total eclipse path is a band of about 10 kilometers across America diagonally. Those outside the ribbon can witness a partial eclipse, including parts of Canada and South America.
The next total eclipse in America will happen in the next seven years. Next year there will be a total solar eclipse that can be watched from the South Pacific, Chile, and Argentina.
