Moon shadow, moon shadow

Sunday’s total solar eclipse was, for the most part, not visible from major land areas: you had to go to Easter Island, or offshore of Tahiti, or somewhere else in the South Pacific, to get into the path of totality. But there was one exception: in far southern Argentina, totality occurred just a few minutes before sunset. And that gave amateur astronomer Daniel Fischer of Germany — and about 100 others who joined him at a scenic overlook in frozen Patagonia with a gorgeous view of the distant Andes mountains on the western horizon — an absolutely incredible vantage point to watch the eclipse. Not only could they see the totally eclipsed sun, they could see the Moon’s shadow itself as it swept across the sky. As Fischer writes on SpaceWeather.com:

[T]he shadow came, racing towards us with supersonic speed, almost grazing the Earth’s surface and about to lift off into space again after having swept through a vast stretch of the Pacific Ocean in the hours past. In a short time we witnessed every phase of the eclipse in the unusually clear Patagonian sky. No one present will ever forget it.

Here are some of Fischer’s photos of the sequence:

Incredible, absolutely incredible. I am so jealous. 🙂

(Posted with Fischer’s permission. Fuller account, and more photos, here.)

UPDATE: From someone else in Patagonia, here’s video: