Sun-eating dragon appears

An enormous swath of western Siberia was submerged in darkness as the moon completely blocked the sun, enrapturing huge crowds of Russians and foreign tourists.

The peak of the eclipse occurred in Novosibirsk, Russia's third largest city. There, forecasts of cloudy skies proved wrong and tens of thousands of people who had flocked to the centre of the town were able to observe the rare total eclipse of the sun which lasted two minutes, 23 seconds in its full beauty.

Traffic stopped. Crowds cheered and whistled as the moon covered the sun, the wind died and the day became night. The eclipse began in Arctic Canada, then passed through Greenland, western Siberia, Mongolia and China.

According to NASA, the next total eclipse will occur on July 22, 2009 starting in India, and moving across Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China and over the Pacific Ocean.