A total solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Saturday, June 30, 1973,[1][2] with a magnitude of 1.0792.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness.

Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide.

The umbral portion of the path started near the border of Guyana and the Brazilian state Roraima, passed northern Dutch Guiana (today's Suriname), headed into the Atlantic, included one of the Portuguese Cape Verde (today's Cape Verde) Islands, which was Santo Antão, Nouadhibou and Nouakchott and other parts of Central Mauritania, northern Mali, the southernmost of Algeria, the middle and southeastern Niger, the middle of Chad, the Sudan including Darfur and parts that are now in the South Sudan including Kodok, a part of the northernmost Uganda, a part of northern Kenya, the southernmost of Somalia, and the Alphonse Group of British Seychelles (today's Seychelles).

A partial eclipse was visible for parts of eastern South America, Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East.

This eclipse was observed by a group of scientists, which included Donald Liebenberg, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

They used two airplanes to extend the apparent time of totality by flying along the eclipse path in the same direction as the Moon's shadow as it passed over Africa.

This enabled scientists from Los Alamos, the Paris Observatory, the Kitt Peak National Observatory, Queen Mary University of London, the University of Aberdeen and CNRS to extend totality to more than 74 minutes; nearly 10 times longer than is possible when viewing a total solar eclipse from a stationary location.

[7] The eclipse was also observed by a charter flight from Mount San Antonio College in Southern California.