A total solar eclipse graces a small section of planet Earth yesterday afternoon. Not many people got to see it in person, but thanks to a partnership between NASA and the San Francisco-based Exploratorium, plenty of science fans got to enjoy it via live stream.
If you missed that live stream, well, that’s a shame because nobody bothered to actually record it. It’s gone forever. Kidding! NASA actually took the time to condense the most important part down to a five-minute time-lapse that you can now enjoy.
The video, which clocks in at exactly five minutes on the nose, offers a fast-paced look at the moments right before totality all the way through to the waning minutes of the eclipse. The images came straight from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, which happened to be right in the perfect spot to capture the event.
This particular eclipse didn’t benefit from the incredible amount of hype that others have, such as the August 2017 eclipse that was visible over much of the United States. Eclipses aren’t actually all that rare, though they often occur over regions where not many people have a chance to enjoy them.
The next total solar eclipse that is likely to take the U.S. by storm will occur in 2024. It will sweep across much of Mexico and then into the United States starting with Texas and moving to the northeast and eventually reaching parts of Canada including Southern Ontario. We’ve still got some time to wait before that one kicks off, though, so in the meantime we’ll just have to enjoy these celestial sights from afar.