A Celestial Wonder – The New York Times

Good morning. Today we want to show you some amazing images from yesterday’s total solar eclipse.

A celestial wonder

“Totality is a cosmic coincidence,” explains our science reporter Katrina Miller:

Our moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but it is also 400 times closer to Earth. This makes the two appear to be the same size from our point of view. The sun, moon and Earth are locked in a gravitational dance around one another, and when these three align, we bear witness to a solar eclipse.

That’s what happened yesterday in parts of Europe. Millions of people looked up to see the moon devour the sun, briefly turning the star that gives us life into a hazy glowing ring in the sky. Day suddenly turned to dark. The air cooled. Crowds cheered. Birds started shrieking. Then, just a couple of minutes later, everything returned to normal.

It was Europe’s first total solar eclipse in decades, a rare collective experience for almost everyone along the viewing path. True totality — the eerie, fleeting event where the sun and the moon perfectly align — could be seen in remote Greenland, in the cliff towns of Iceland and in parts of Spain.

As the moon appeared to slide across the surface of the sun, skywatchers who came prepared donned eclipse glblockes and stared up.

On Iceland’s west coast, the clouds parted just enough to allow a glimpse of the solar eclipse. First, the sun narrowed to a sliver, like a French tip on a celestial manicure. Then, it was suddenly twilight.

In the Spanish heartland, where large crowds gathered in normally empty towns, excited visitors chanted “Now, now, now!” as the moon took its first nibble. In Mallorca, the moment of totality arrived just before sundown, making it feel even more dramatic. An optical illusion causes the sun to look much larger as it nears the horizon, where the Earth’s atmosphere also shifts the color of the light.

In cities along the path of totality, the eclipse was one of the summer’s main attractions. My colleague Jason Karaian, who was in Mallorca, noticed a restaurant offering a burger with a side of eclipse-watching glblockes for about $23.

Eclipses are special because they’re rare. The United States, for instance, won’t see a coast-to-coast eclipse until 2045. As Katrina put it:

It offers a primal sense of what it means to be human, through shared despair and delight under a celestial rebirth. We are all so consumed by our problems on the ground. Sometimes, we need a reason to look up.

See more photos here.

Related: During the last total solar eclipse visible from Spain, in 1905, the U.S. Navy sent warships to take high-definition photographs with one of the largest cameras then constructed. See what they captured.

IN ONE IMAGE

The recent earthquake in Colombia hit the city of Cali particularly hard. Officials feared that more than 200 people were trapped alive under the rubble there as of Tuesday. This photograph shows the rescue of one survivor — Diana Marcela Troncoso, 31, who was trapped for almost 30 hours. Click the image to see details of the operation.

No way out: Roberto Mosquera was deported from the United States to Eswatini, an African country he’d never heard of. He may never go free.

Sound of silence: Meet the filmmakers who think silent movies are the best way to make themselves heard.

India’s most livable city: That’s what one state leader has set out to build — no easy task in a country known for poor infrastructure and high pollution. See what he has planned.

TODAY’S EMOJI

— This was the most popular emoji worldwide last year, according to data from Google. It rose from fourth place, leapfrogging 🤣, 😂 and ❤️. Texters, especially young ones, deploy it when something is so funny, emotional or embarrblocking you could cry.

LAKERS SALE

Just over a year after buying the Los Angeles Lakers at a record-setting valuation of $10 billion, Mark Walter agreed to sell the team to Bob Iger, the former Disney C.E.O., and Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared, at a $12.5 billion valuation.

The deal is for Walter’s shares in the Lakers and does not affect his ownership of the Dodgers or Sparks. Kushner will have to sell his minority share in the Miami Heat. Here’s what we know about the deal and how it went down.

Related: Walter’s continued control of the Dodgers is a positive sign for the team’s ability to keep the superstar Shohei Ohtani.

RECIPE OF THE DAY

Lindsay Zoladz, one of our music critics, is having a Bob Dylan summer. She is reading two new books about less heralded parts of his career — one on his musical output since the 1990s, the other on his foray into filmmaking. And she saw him play live, at age 85, on his Long Hot Summer Tour. “There was such a relaxed virtuosity to the whole performance,” she writes.

For her newsletter, The Amplifier, Lindsay made a playlist of Dylan songs, inspired by the books and the concert. Pop it on and have your own Bob Dylan summer.

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