Skygazers across Americas witnessed a rare annular solar eclipse Saturday.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, people wearing protective eyewear watched the Moon pass between the Sun and Earth at its furthest point from our planet.

Since it is so distant, it did not cover the Sun completely, creating a "ring of fire" effect that brought cheers from the crowd in Albuquerque.

In the course of just a few hours the most striking "path of the annularity" was crossing a handful of major cities, including Eugene, Oregon and San Antonio, Texas, with partial eclipse phases lasting an hour or two before and after.

At any given location, the eclipse was visible from between 30 seconds and five minutes — but people were urged to take safety precautions and use solar viewing glasses, and never regular sunglasses, to preserve their vision.

The eclipse crossed into Mexico and Central America, then into South America through Colombia and northern Brazil before ending at sunset in the Atlantic Ocean.

The event also served as a dress rehearsal ahead of a total eclipse set for April 2024.

Bo th eclipses are going to be "absolutely breathtaking for science," Madhulika Guhathakurta, a heliophysics program scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said.

A total eclipse took place in 2017 in the United States. After next April's total eclipse, there will not be another until 2044, while the next annular eclipse will be in 2046.

WITH AFP