Wednesday saw a dramatic “ring of fire” visible in one of Earth’s most remote and iconic places. The first solar eclipse since April 8’s total solar eclipse across North America saw as much as 93% of the sun’s center blocked by a new moon to create a beautiful ring shape for a few momentous minutes.
Here are some of the best images of the annular solar eclipse and the partial phases from Easter Island, Chile and Argentina.
On Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, the sun was eclipsed by the moon for up to 7 minutes 25 seconds as seen from the South Pacific Ocean, southern South America and the South Atlantic Ocean.
In an annular solar eclipse, the moon partially blocks the sun’s center. That’s because the moon is smaller than on average and at the farthest-from-Earth point on its slightly elliptical monthly orbit. It’s the opposite of a “supermoon.” Observers saw a ring around the moon for a few minutes through solar eclipse glasses.
The eclipse path was about 165 miles (267 kilometers) wide, beginning in the Pacific Ocean at sunrise and ending in the South Atlantic Ocean at sunset. It stretched 8,800 miles (14,163 kilometers) long and took three hours and 49 minutes to cross Earth between 16:50 UTC and 20:39 UTC.
Key locations where the “ring of fire” was visible included Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Chile, Parque Nacional Perito Moreno, Puerto Deseado and Puerto San Julian, Argentina. In total, just 175,000 lived in the path of this eclipse.
Easter Island, the territory of Chile, attracted hundreds of international eclipse chasers. It is known for its giant stone statues of human figures, called moai, which the Rapa Nui people carved between about 1250 and 1500. Most are set on stone platforms called ahu around the island’s coastline, where the moai look out to sea.
A partial solar eclipse was seen across the Pacific and South America, with Santiago, Chile (44%), Montevideo, Uruguay (42%), Buenos Aires, Argentina (42%), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (10%) and Stanley, Falkland Islands (84%) all getting some kind of view. Meanwhile, Hawaiians could glimpse “devil’s horns” as two limbs of the sun poked above the horizon at sunrise during a 50% partially eclipsed sunrise.
The next two solar eclipses are partials on March 29, 2025 (Europe, northern Asia, north and west Africa, North America, northern South America, the Atlantic and Arctic) and Sept. 21, 2025 (southern Australia, the Pacific, the Atlantic and Antarctica).
The next annular solar eclipse is on Feb. 17, 2026 (southern Africa, southern South America, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and Antarctica), and the next total solar eclipse is on Aug. 12, 2026, when a total solar eclipse will be visible in Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Totality will last up to 2 minutes 18 seconds.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
