CAIRO: Thousands of Egyptians, tourists, astronomers and the Egyptian president, watched Wednesday s total solar eclipse from a prime location, an isolated desert town on the Libyan border, where darkness fell and stars appeared in the daytime sky. The town of Salum lays nearly dead center on the path of the total eclipse, giving spectators there nearly four minutes of darkness. Astronomers from six countries, including NASA scientists from the United States, came to Salum to observe. They were joined by some 8,000 tourists, hundreds of journalists, and President Hosni Mubarak, his wife and several ministers, who arrived in a convoy of several vehicles as folklore troupes played popular Egyptian music. Salum, usually visited only by workers and truckers crossing the border, was turned into an impromptu tourist draw: a three kilometer stretch of beach was set up a day earlier with umbrellas, chairs and coffee-shops, and a firework show was given Tuesday night. Several Egyptian television stations and the Al-Jazeera news network showed live footage from Salum as the moon covered the sun, and at around 12:38 p.m. Wednesday the sky went black and a few bright stars appeared as popular music went higher. In Cairo, residents got a glimpse at a partial eclipse, and as the bright sunlight faded, some stopped to look up, some through filters, some without. One woman on a street corner held up a medical x-ray photo she was carrying, watching the event through the protection of someone s spine. AP
