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On Aug. 12, the luckiest 15 million people in the world were those living in a narrow band measuring approximately 5,100 miles long<\/a> and 180 miles wide<\/a>, stretching from northern Russia, down through Greenland, then Iceland, then Spain, then a tiny nip of Portugal, before passing into the Mediterranean Sea. That strip represented the path of totality for the recent total solar eclipse\u2014the first visible from Europe in 27 years.<\/p>\n The eclipse did not take long to play out, lasting just 4.4 hours<\/a> before it at last extinguished its fires in the Mediterranean waters. But it made an enduring impression\u2014and will continue to, thanks to the uncounted astronomers and lay folk who photographed the event with ordinary cameras, great observatories, and even a NASA chase plane<\/a>. Here is just a sampling of the work these eclipse-watchers produced.<\/p>\n