Solar eclipse April 2023: rare hybrid solar eclipse appears in the sky over Australia and parts of Indonesia

A rare solar eclipse has appeared in the sky over Australia - much to the delight of the 20,000 people who were waiting to see it. A crowd, full of people from around the world, had been gathering for days along part of the nation's northwest coast, hoping for a glimpse of the unique spectacle.

The remote tourist town of Exmouth, which has fewer than 3,000 residents, was one of the best vantage points in Australia to see the eclipse, but it also crossed remote parts of Indonesia and East Timor.

People who had been camping in tents and trailers on a red, dusty plain on the edge of town with cameras and other viewing equipment pointed skyward were rewarded for their patience. It was under a cloudless sky that the hybrid solar eclipse appeared into brief midday darkness on Thursday 20 April (around 3am UK time) with an accompanying temperature drop.

Nasa astronomer Henry Throop, from Washington, United States, was among those at Exmouth who viewed the spectacle. He said: “Isn’t it incredible? This is so fantastic. It was mind-blowing. It was so sharp and it was so bright. You could see the corona around the sun there. It’s only a minute long, but it really felt like a long time. There’s nothing else you can see which looks like that. It was just awesome. Spectacular. And then you could see Jupiter and Mercury and to be able to see those at the same time during the day — even seeing Mercury at all is pretty rare. So that was just awesome."

Julie Copson, who travelled more than 600 miles from the Australian west coast port city of Fremantle north to Exmouth to see the solar eclipse, said the phenomenon left her skin tingling. She added: “I feel so emotional, like I could cry. The colour changed and (I saw) the corona and sun flares. She also spoke of the sudden 5C fall in temperature when the moon's shadow enveloped the region and said the feeling was "strong".

In Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta, hundreds visited the Jakarta Planetarium, a public planetarium and observatory, to see the partial eclipse which was obscured by clouds. Azka Azzahra, age 21, made the journey with her sister and friends to get a closer look by using the telescopes with hundreds of other visitors. “I am still happy to come even though it is cloudy. It is happy to see how people with high enthusiasm come here to see the eclipse, because it is rare,” she said.

The hybrid solar eclipse could be tracked from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and was mostly over water. The people who were in its path either saw the darkness of a total eclipse or a ring of fire as the sun peeked from behind the new moon. These celestial events happen about once every decade so it is a very exciting occasion. The last one was in 2013 and the next one will not happen until 2031.

They occur when the Earth is in an exact place which means that the moon and the sun are almost the exact same size in the sky, said Nasa solar expert Michael Kirk. At some points, the moon is a little closer and blocks out the sun in a total eclipse, however, when the moon is a little farther away it lets some of the sun’s light peek out in an annular eclipse. Kirk added: “It’s a crazy phenomenon. You’re actually watching the moon get larger in the sky."