STUTTGART, Germany -- Amidst a sputtering rain, the millennium's last total eclipse cast its shadow across the soggy city at 12:32:55 p.m. It blanketed the area in darkness for two minutes and 17 seconds.
The clouds made it difficult to tell when the moon began to traverse the path of the sun, but there was no mistaking its final alignment. Temperatures suddenly fell, colors faded, and day turned to night.
Birds, which had erupted into a garrulous evensong at the first hints of the false twilight, were abruptly silent. The world took on a sepia tone, and the sky darkened with the black sun.
The mood remained buoyant in the crowd occupying the Schlossplatz, the city's main square, which boasts two castles and neoclassical buildings. Cheers erupted, champagne bottles popped, lovers smooched, and amateur fireworks ignited.
Simon Niederhauser, 25, traveled from Switzerland and camped overnight in the main train station to watch the eclipse in Stuttgart. He said the rain didn't bother him. "It's a party, anyway. You never know what's going to happen."
A couple from Stuttgart embraced underneath their umbrella. "The rain machts nicht, it's still nice to be here. Life, and the eclipse, go on," the woman said.
Stuttgart is "eclipse central" in Germany. This provincial capital of 630,500 people has been inundated with a half-million sun worshippers. For most, it is the only chance to witness a total eclipse in their lifetimes: The next obscuration returns to Germany in 2081.
Stuttgart was ready for the crowds. Although hotels reported no vacancies and stores ran out of the flimsy foil-and-paper glasses deemed safe for eclipse viewing, the city had planned several fêtes.
An open-air festival in the city center included telescopes for revelers. An all-night rave began at 12:30 a.m. and continued into the afternoon. The best parties were the impromptu affairs of drink and dance that broke out in the train station, the Schlossplatz, and the streets.
But for Harald Schmeisser of the Stuttgart Solar E.V. -- a scientific group promoting solar energy -- the partying obscured the gravity of the event. "I was disappointed by the people. They cannot stay calm in the face of something incredible. They stand there and shout, instead of watching nature and look at what wonders there are -- for just two minutes. Maybe it's some illness of our time; there always has to be action. It is sad ... because you only see this once in your life."
But Schmeisser did appreciate the free publicity for the sun.
"You see many companies using [the eclipse]," he said, referring to the copious advertisements on German TV and in print that capitalized on the event. "It brings the sun into the spotlight. People see that if we didn't have the sun, we wouldn't exist. Also, people get interested in the sun: 'What is the sun, why does this happen, how does it work?'"
Astronomers consider solar eclipses a cosmic coincidence. Although the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, it is 400 times farther away -- and so the two heavenly bodies appear identical in size to the stargazer on Earth.
Since the Earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the Earth in counter-clockwise directions, there is the rare chance the moon will line up precisely between the Earth and the sun. And if the moon's orbit is at just the right tilt, its lunar shadow falls onto Earth, causing an eclipse.
Professor Hans-Ullrich Keller, lead scientist at the Stuttgarter Planetarium, talked about Stuttgart's place in the sun.
"The most interesting thing about 11 August is the shadow zone goes over southern Germany, and that is very rare. And what's further different is this shadow zone ... goes exactly over Stuttgart ... the middle line, or center line, goes through the center of the municipal area."
Born off the coast of Nova Scotia, the eclipse's umbra, or shadow of totality, traveled east to west at 2,000 miles per hour before dissolving over the Bay of Bengal. While the umbra was less than 100 miles wide, the penumbra, or partial shadow, cut a 3,000-mile-wide swath across 11 European and six Asian nations.
It was likely the most-watched astronomical event in history. Of the estimated 300 million viewers, many logged on to the Web, as dozens of sites, including San Francisco's Exploratorium museum, webcast a live feed.
"We should be able to handle millions of hits," said Ron Hipschman, the Exploratorium's webmaster, prior to the eclipse. "We're not sure [of the number of users], but we are ready for them."
"I expect that many tens of thousands of people not lucky enough to be near the path of totality will want to log on and see it."
Despite the festive atmosphere, the eclipse gave some spectators pause. Yasmin Höhn, 18, who came from Frieburg, admitted as she swigged from a bottle of vodka that the eclipse had caused some weightier reflections.
"Yes, I have thought about the Weltuntergang" -- the end of the world.
Twenty minutes after the eclipse, the sun broke through the clouds. Standing in the Schlossplatz, one woman said, "The sun came out, and the world is still here."
