Friday provided an early-bird special for eager stargazers in the U.S.
The eclipse wasn't visible for most Americans, so many watched it on television or through NASA's web site. The eclipse swept across the Earth, beginning in Canada's northern territories and ending in China.

A solar eclipse happens rarely. It occurs when the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun, blocking out the sun's light for a short period of time.

When the moon totally engulfs the sun's rays, it's beautiful solar corona appears as a halo-type ring of light around the moon. It appears small surrounding a much closer moon, but the sun's corona actually stretches about 620 thousand miles above the sun's visible surface.

Friday's special event was enough to prompt people all over the globe to take a trip to see it in person. A trip to the North Pole, where the eclipse lasted a possible two-and-a-half minutes, cost about 23,000 dollars.

Like many celestial events, solar eclipses have been recorded for nearly four-thousand years. According to NASA the next total solar eclipse will occur a little less than a year from now, in July 2009.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)