By Ron Cowen
For 4 minutes and 7 seconds early on the afternoon of March 29, thousands of people who had trekked deep into the southern Sahara Desert saw blazing day turn into night. Wearing turbans to keep the sand out of their hair, the sky watchers in Libya were treated to a picture-perfect view of the sun being blocked by the shadow of the moon. It was also the longest such eclipse ever seen.
As the sun disappeared, a white, lacy halo popped into view. It was the sun’s wispy outer atmosphere, or corona, which is rarely seen because it’s normally washed out by the sun’s glare.