Solar eclipse: Thousands flock to remote Australian town for rare celestial event

Thousands of tourists and scientists have flocked to a small Australian town offering one of the best vantage points on Earth for a rare solar eclipse.

The sky over Exmouth in Western Australia will turn dark for about 60 seconds on Thursday, when the moon casts a 40km-wide shadow over the area.

The total solar eclipse is part of a rare hybrid eclipse, which occurs only a handful of times per century.

Partial eclipses will also be visible across other parts of the Asia-Pacific.

This eclipse begins in the Indian Ocean at sunrise and ends at sunset in the Pacific, with observers at different points in the path of the eclipse able to see its different - or hybrid - phases.

Some will see a total solar eclipse. Others will view what is know as an annular solar eclipse - where the Moon does not completely block the whole of the sun.

People living in Western Australia, Timor-Leste and West Papua will have the best views.

But only those on the Exmouth Peninsula will experience the total solar eclipse, at 11:27 local time (4:27 BST).

Exmouth - a reef-side tourist town 1,200 kilometres north of Perth - is normally home to just under 3,000 people. But its population has expanded sevenfold with the keen stargazers descending on the town.

The last hybrid solar eclipse was in November 2013, and Nasa expects the next in 2031.