pixels and pictures

On Monday, August 21, 2017, millions of people were staring at the same thing through doofy glasses, as they tried to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse.

An observer in Colorado stands framed by a partial solar eclipse in a picture taken last week and submitted to National Geographic's My Shot.

Solar eclipses happen when the moon lines up between Earth and the sun. But in the most recent case, known as an annular eclipse, the dark moon's apparent diameter was smaller than the visible disk of the sun, so that it left a ring—or annulus—of fiery light around the edges.

The event was the first annular eclipse seen from the mainland United States since 1994.