The International Space Station caused quite a stir today when it cruised past the sun, mid-eclipse.

The ISS orbits the earth 15.54 times a day, travelling at 17,200mph, I just found out.

Here in New York City we got 71.4% of an eclipse at 2.44pm.

The peak eclipsing was obscured by cloud, which lessened the effect a little. The skies darkened but only in the way they do when a rain shower is imminent. The peak moment itself was a bit of an anti-climax. But at the Museum of Natural History we got a solid 30-40 minutes of moon on sun action, with occasional cheers and applause from the crowd.

No roosters crowed. No one burst into song. No human sacrifices were made.

But the clear skies did make for a beautiful image. Like this one, from the Guardian’s Paul Owen. He says he nearly blinded himself taking it.

The Guardian’s Charlotte Simmonds is in Big Summit Prairie at Oregon Eclipse – a week-long festival to celebrate the total eclipse. She writes:

On a prairie in the woods of Ochoco national forest, attendees spent the weekend dancing, swimming, doing yoga and attending inspirational talks. At 9am on Monday morning, thousands gathered on the hills around a lake for a special eclipse “ceremony”. Some played music while others chanted, though many sat in silence. As the moment of totality approached, shouts and applause filled the air. At 10.19am – the moment of totality – people embraced as the sky fell dark, stars came out, and the sun’s extraordinary corona was visible for a brief few minutes.

Colin Day, a video game programmer from the Bay Area, said this was his fourth eclipse. “I saw my first one at a small festival on Easter Island. Then one in Australia and one in Indonesia. It never gets old. It’s the most beautiful natural phenomenon I’ve ever seen.”

Sharon Melnick, 61, had travelled from her home in Klamath Falls, Oregon. “I knew this is where I wanted to be and who I wanted to be with.” She said it was her second eclipse and that witnessing the phenomenon was a moment to reflect. “I liked stepping into the silence and the darkness. I thought about what I’m leaving behind and what I’m bringing into the light. It was two minutes that could be used transformationally and I am grateful for it.”

Vanessa Baskin, an arial performance artist, had travelled from Brooklyn. For her the eclipse symbolized a moment of personal growth she called “a marriage to myself”. “The eclipse is more than a thing that’s just happening,” she said. “I’m putting my own meaning on it. I wanted to use the union of two celestial bodies as a metaphor for loving myself.”

Many at the festival said it had taken them 12 hours to drive on site, which was only accessible down a dirt road, on Wednesday and Thursday due to heavy traffic. In the nearby town of Prineville, a gas station had run out of gas for several hours. “We saw them get slammed for two days,” said Sherry, a local resident who worked at the restaurant next door. Speaking on the Saturday before the eclipse, she said the restaurant itself hadn’t been as busy as expected – “we’d planned for the worst” – but they hoped “business would pick up over the weekend”. And where was she planning to watch the eclipse? “From a chair in my backyard.”

Guardian contributor Lily Raff McCaulou was with eclipse-watchers in Madras, Oregon. She writes:

In Madras, Keeman Wong had been waiting 15 years for the moment. He first bought a solar filter as a middle schooler in Hong Kong in the 1960s, to protect his eyes during a partial eclipse. For the past 15 years, Wong, who now lives in Los Angeles, has attempted to witness a total solar eclipse – in Zimbabwe, Easter Island and China – but each attempt was foiled by weather, travel snags or state department warnings against travel to dangerous areas. He was entranced by how eclipse viewers spoke about their experiences.

“They describe it as life-changing,” he said.

This time, he let nothing get in his way. He even packed the small rectangular filter that he’d bought five decades ago.

“I got here early because I said, ‘if there’s an accident on the road, an earthquake … I’m going to be there,’” he said. “It’s worth everything.”

For Wong, the most spectacular moment was the end of the total eclipse.

“I’m not religious but I think it’s something very like when God says, ‘let there be light,’” he said.

Groans here at the American Museum of Natural History as clouds obscure the sun, which is in the process of being obscured by the moon.

But then cheers as the clouds clear off!

“I’ve been excited all summer. I’m a huge space geek so I’ve been spending the entire summer figuring out the best plan,” says Brooke Boetticher, 21.

Boetticher is here with her mum, Janet, and sister Brittany, who is 16. They’ve travelled her from Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey, to witness the eclipse in the city.

The Boettichers have all got eclipse glasses and have formed what they call an “eclipse family”. The eclipse family is made up of their actual family, two other women, and me.

“It’s like a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Brittany says.

“It’s really cool to be able to see it and be here with a bunch of people who also like seeing the same thing.”

A quick scroll through this blog will reveal the difficulty I’ve had in describing the eclipse all day.

Brittany puts it quite well though:

“It’s like a reverse crescent moon. Instead of the moon its the sun.”

It’s been a big day for Nasa – the space agency reported 4.4 million people were watching its TV coverage midway through the eclipse, the biggest livestream event in its history.

The solar eclipse continues to march eastwards – and we’ve got about half an hour until its final bow at 2.49pm ET near Charleston, South Carolina. Send us your pics and video!

Here’s a refresher of where we’re up to. Idaho has just experienced a total eclipse, and cities and towns in the middle of the US will soon be treated to the same.

Here on the east coast we can already see a partial eclipse. South Carolina will be the last state to get a total eclipse, at around 2.40pm.

The Associated Press news agency has sent out the following report under the rather alarmist headline: “THE MOON IS BLOTTING THE SUN FROM THE SKY”.

The shadow, a corridor just 60 to 70 miles wide came ashore in Oregon and then began racing diagonally across the continent to South Carolina, with darkness lasting only about two to three minutes in any one spot.

“The show has just begun, people! What a gorgeous day! Isn’t this great, people?” Jim Todd, a director at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, told a crowd of thousands at an amphitheater in Salem, Oregon, as the moon seemed to take an ever-bigger bite out of the sun and temperature soon dropped noticeably.

“It’s like nothing else you will ever see or ever do,” said veteran eclipse-watcher Mike O’Leary of San Diego, who set up his camera along with among hundreds of other amateur astronomers gathered in Casper, Wyoming.

“It can be religious. It makes you feel insignificant, like you’re just a speck in the whole scheme of things.”
Astronomers were giddy with excitement. A solar eclipse is considered one of the grandest of cosmic spectacles.

The Earth, moon and sun line up perfectly every one to three years, briefly turning day into night for a sliver of the planet. But these sights normally are in no man’s land, like the vast Pacific or Earth’s poles. This is the first eclipse of the social media era to pass through such a heavily populated area.

“It’s really, really, really, really awesome,” said 9-year-old Cami Smith as she watched the fully eclipsed sun from a gravel lane near her grandfather’s home at Beverly Beach, Oregon.

This blog is now being brought to you from the American Museum of Natural History. They were giving away free eclipse glasses.

I can report that a partial eclipse is in process. It looks like a pancake that someone has taken a very neat bite out of. Or like a cookie that someone has taken a very neat bite out of.

The Museum of Natural History is one of a number of places in New York City that were holding viewing events, and predictably it is packed. I’m sitting behind two children wearing ‘Nasa’ t-shirts, which seems appropriate.

A man next to me is talking about how everyone here will be dead in one hundred years. I was concerned it might upset the children in the Nasa t-shirts, but they are playing Angry Birds on an iPhone 4 and don’t seem to be listening.

In other eclipse news:

While the moon begins to reveal the sun in Oregon, a total eclipse has just formed in Idaho Falls.

“It just got dark all around us and you can feel the temperature getting colder,” says one of the presenters on Nasa’s live stream.

There’s a lot of cheering. A scientist, whose name I didn’t hear, is very excited.

“Look at the ray structure,” he says.

“You can’t get that on film. There’s Venus. There’s Venus. Oh wow. Wow. Look at that ray structure.”

It’s all happening!

The live stream at the top of our page shows the moon slowly edging across the sun. It’s a majestic sight. Like a big black disc moving in front of a big white disc.

Or like waking up in the middle of surgery and the doctor’s head is looming over you, partially blocking out the light.

Donald Trump, the president of the USA, will be among those watching the eclipse today. Trump, a 71-year-old former builder, will be watching from the White House, where he will experience 81.1% of an eclipse at 2.42pm.

The Guardian’s political reporter Ben Jacobs has this:

The White House announced Monday afternoon that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will watch the eclipse from the Truman Balcony which overlooks the South Lawn of the White House. It’s the second eclipse viewing event held by the administration today. Vice President Mike Pence had already been scheduled to participate in “a Great American Solar Eclipse viewing event” with charter school students at his residence at the Naval Observatory.

Millions of people are traveling to the path of the total eclipse.

If you’re one of them, we’d love to hear from you.

You can share your pictures and videos by clicking on the blue “Contribute” button on this article. You can also use the Guardian app and search for “GuardianWitness assignments”.

We’ll post the images on this blog.

Mike Seely, who is flying on board a plane today in order to view the solar eclipse from the air, speaks to a former firefighter taking the same flight.

As a high-schooler growing up in White Plains, New York, Dennis Cassia and a couple of friends ventured to North Carolina to take in their first full solar eclipse.

“It was so spectacular that I kind of got the bug,” says Cassia, a 65-year-old retired