A total solar eclipse occurred at the Moon’s ascending node of orbit on Wednesday, March 29, 2006,[1][2][3] with a magnitude of 1.0515.

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 path of totality of the Moon's shadow began at sunrise in Brazil and extended across the Atlantic to Africa, traveling across Ghana, the southeastern tip of Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Libya, and a small corner of northwest Egypt, from there across the Mediterranean Sea to Greece (Kastellórizo) and Turkey, then across the Black Sea via Georgia, Russia, and Kazakhstan to Western Mongolia, where it ended at sunset.

The San Francisco Exploratorium featured a live webcast from the site, where thousands of observers were seated in the ancient, Roman-style theater.

Many observers reported an unusually beautiful eclipse, with many or all effects visible, and a very nice corona, despite the proximity to the solar minimum.

The partial phase of the eclipse was also visible from the International Space Station, where the astronauts on board took spectacular pictures of the moon's shadow on Earth's surface.

[9] Russian scientists studied on coronal polarization in the Baksan River Gorge surrounded by snow mountains in the North Caucasus.

[8][13] A team of 20 people from the Chinese Astronomical Society [zh] took images of Baily's beads, corona and prominences in Sallum, Egypt.

Then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Minister of Defense Muhammad Tantawi and other officials also went there by helicopter and observed the eclipse with scientists and tourists.

[14][15] The satellite responsible for SKY Network Television, a New Zealand pay TV company, failed the day after this eclipse at around 1900 local time.

While SKY didn't directly attribute the failure to the eclipse, they said in a media release that it took longer to resolve the issue because of it, but this claim was rejected by astronomers.