Around 20,000 eclipse chasers gathered under a cloudless sky in the northwest Australian coastal town of Exmouth to enjoy a rare total solar eclipse that plunged the region into darkness for about a minute late Thursday morning. The remote tourist town with fewer than 3,000 residents was promoted as one of the best vantage points in Australia to see the eclipse that also crosses remote parts of Indonesia and East Timor. An international crowd had been gathering at Exmouth for days, camping in tents and trailers on a red, dusty plain on the edge of town with cameras and other viewing equipment pointed skyward. NASA astronomer Henry Throop was among those at Exmouth loudly cheering the eclipse in the darkness. “It’s just beautiful and there’s nothing else you can see which looks like that,” the visibly excited Washington resident told Australian Broadcasting Corp. The hybrid solar eclipse tracked from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and was mostly over water. The lucky few people in its path either saw the darkness of a total eclipse or a “ring of fire” as the sun peeked from behind the new moon. Such celestial events happen about once every decade: The last one was in 2013 and the next one isn’t until 2031. Several other upcoming solar eclipses will be easier to catch. An annular eclipse in mid-October and a total eclipse next April will both cross over millions of people in the Americas.