Millions of persons across the Americas were treated to a unusual celestial phenomenon on Saturday as an annular solar eclipse — recognized as the “ring of fire” — briefly darkened skies from Oregon to Brazil.

Spectators hooted and hollered as the moon handed in front of the sun, not wholly blocking it out, but leaving a halo of sunlight piercing as a result of at its edges.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, sizzling-air balloons speckled a clear sky, using people today even nearer to the eclipse as the occasion coincided with the city’s annual balloon festival.

“It’s quite thrilling to be here and have the convergence of our appreciate of flying with anything pretty pure like an eclipse,” balloon pilot Allan Hahn of Aurora, Colorado, said.

His balloon, named Heaven Certain Far too, was one particular of 72 chosen for a exclusive “glow” efficiency as skies dimmed.

A great deal of the Western hemisphere fell in the eclipse’s west-east route: Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas in the US, with a sliver of California, Arizona and Colorado. It was also visible in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Brazil. 

NASA and other room companies livestreamed the eclipse.

The full eclipse — from the second the moon starts to obscure the sun right until it is back again to normal — is 2 1/2 to 3 hours at any presented location. 

Nevertheless, the extremely predicted “ring of fire” portion lasts from just 3 to 5 minutes, depending on area.

In Cancun, Mexico, hundreds of folks hoping to get a appear at the obscured sun packed into the city’s planetarium to look at the eclipse. Some took a peek via box projectors, when other people looked by means of telescopes and protecting specific glasses.

Youngsters and adults cheered and whistled, with some increasing their arms to the sky at the spectacle.

“It is the 3rd 1 that I have viewed, but I appear simply because of the energy it provides you. It is a little something that mother nature provides us and that we ought to check out,” Pilar Cáceres, 77, a retired elementary college trainer reported. 

Other enthusiasts flocked to a lot more remote locations for the eclipse, these kinds of as Bryce Canyon Countrywide Park in southern Utah.

Kirby James and Caroline McGuire of Toronto mentioned they hadn’t prepared their trip to the preferred park all over the eclipse but were being elated to be there for the “epic” encounter between the purple rock hoodoos.

“Nothing that you can browse could get ready you for how it feels,” explained Kirby James, 63, a co-founder of a computer software organization. “It’s the second, especially when the ring of fire arrived on, you understood you were possessing a life span expertise.”

Future April, a whole photo voltaic eclipse will move across the United States in the opposite path, beginning in Mexico, then Texas and on to New England in advance of concluding in jap Canada.

The subsequent ring of hearth eclipse, which occurs a lot less usually, will be in October up coming calendar year at the southernmost idea of South The usa. Antarctica will see a single in 2026. 

Right after that, the ring of fire will not be seen in the US till 2039 — and Alaska will be the only point out in its immediate route.