At 4am on Tuesday, Sarah Marwick’s alarm went off: it was time to get her children and partner ready for their flight from Heathrow to Toronto, with a stopover in Chicago. The 3,500-mile journey towards seeing her seventh total solar eclipse had begun.
“It’s kind of an addiction I guess,” the slightly jet-lagged 51-year-old GP from Birmingham said, coffee in hand, during a first-morning call with Sky News from her hotel room in Toronto.
She has so far travelled to France, Africa, Libya, China, Svalbard and Wyoming, as her first experience of the moon’s perfect alignment with the sun and earth made her want to keep chasing total eclipses.
Image: Sarah Marwick viewing the eclipse from Wyoming. Pic: Andy Vile
Back then, it was 1999. She was 26 and had just finished university when she travelled with her family to Reims, France, for the event.
There were thick clouds in the sky but it was nonetheless the “most unworldly experience”, Sarah said, as it was like “some kind of end-of-days movie where you see this blackness just approaching you”.
‘The eclipse was perfect’
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p>Sarah said she is “torn between” her eclipse experiences but if she had to choose a favourite it would be the one on a trip to Zimbabwe and Zambia, where she boarded a canoe and camped on a sand island surrounded by hippos.
“It was the most glorious day… the eclipse was perfect. I was absolutely hooked at that point.”
During a total solar eclipse, the sky falls dark as if it were dawn or dusk, and a halo forms around the sun as its light is blocked out by the moon.
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During her trip to Zimbabwe and Zambia, the eclipse wasn’t as dark as Sarah expected it to be, it was “more like a 360-degree sunset”.
Image: A map of the path of the eclipse across the United States
“There was a black hole in the middle of the sky where the sun should be and it was just stunning,” she said.
Next stop was Libya in 2006.
Asked what pushed her to travel to the conflict-torn country, Sarah said her trip predated the 2011 NATO-led invasion aimed at overthrowing its dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.
While it felt a bit “hairy” at times, she said, “it wasn’t in a good state, but it wasn’t in chaos”.
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In 2008, Sarah’s hobby took her on a trip to China with fellow eclipse lovers.
“That wasn’t just a holiday to see the eclipse. This was a group of 60 people who were all there bringing like 10 cameras with them,” she said.
“It made me know I’m not the only crazy person in the world that does this.”
Asked if she could ever get tired of chasing eclipses, she firmly said: “You never ever become used to a sight, it never gets old… it’s different every time.”
Svalbard, between the North Pole and Norway
After a few years off because of unpractical locations, Sarah flew to Norway with her family but left her children in Oslo so she could catch a glimpse of the 2015 eclipse in Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago on the Arctic Circle.
“It was absolutely stunning. It was like -26C, we were basically on an ice sheet in the Arctic Circle with these mountains behind,” she said.
“That one was incredible because the light reflected off the ice, it was so bright and then it got dark.”
A 2017 trip to Wyoming which included a stop at the Yellowstone National Park was the first time her children, at the time aged five and eight, saw a total solar eclipse.
Image: The GP’s children experienced a total solar eclipse for the first time in Wyoming in 2017. Pic: Sarah Marwick
Explaining how she goes about choosing which total eclipse she is going to chase, Sarah said it depends on affordability as well as practicality, while she will also strive to build a trip around the spectacle.
“It’s a really good excuse to go to places I wouldn’t have necessarily otherwise have chosen to go,” she said.
Now in Toronto, she is buzzing to see Monday’s eclipse as she jokes about suffering from “withdrawal symptoms”.
Image: Sarah said she tries to build a holiday around the solar eclipses. Pic: Andy Vile
So why do it?
“I’m not in any way religious at all,” Sarah said. “But it’s almost as close to a religious experience you can get without being religious.
“The universe puts on this amazing spectacle for you, but equally you know you are so small.
“It’s happening, you cannot control it, this is bigger than you, but you can enjoy it and then the lights come back on and the universe gets on with its day… but if you’ve seen a total eclipse, it changes you forever.”
The biggest city in the Sahel has been ransacked and left in ruins.
War erupted in Sudan’s capital Khartoum in April 2023 and sent millions searching for safety.
The city was quickly captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after a power struggle with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for total control.
At least 61,000 people were killed from the fighting and siege conditions in Khartoum state alone.
Thousands more were maimed and many remain missing.
The empty streets they left behind are lined with charred, bullet-ridden buildings and robbed store fronts.
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The once shiny skyscrapers built along the confluence of the River Nile are now husks of blackened steel.
The neighbourhoods are skeletal. Generational homes are deserted and hollow.
Image: Damage from fighting around Khartoum
Trenches snake the streets where copper electric cables were ripped out of the ground and pulled out of lampposts now overridden with weeds.
The majority of the 13 million people displaced by this war fled Khartoum. Many left in a rush, assuming it would only take a few weeks for peace to be restored.
My parents were among those millions and in the midst of the abandoned, looted homes is the house where I grew up.
Image: Yousra Elbagir’s family home was left in ruins by RSF troops
Image: Yousra said it was likely a bomb had previously fallen nearby and shaken the house at its base
A shell of a home
I have to strain my eyes to see the turn to my house. All the usual markers are gone. There are no gatherings of young people drinking coffee with tea ladies in the leafy shade – just gaping billboard frames that once held up advertisements behind cars of courting couples parked by the Nile.
Our garden is both overgrown and dried to death.
The mango, lemon and jasmine trees carefully planted by my mother and brother have withered.
Image: Structural damage to the outside of the home
The Bougainvillea has reached over the pathway and blocked off the main entrance. We go through the small black side door.
Our family car is no longer in the garage, forcing us to walk around it.
It was stolen shortly after my parents evacuated.
The two chairs my mum and dad would sit at the centre of the front lawn are still there, but surrounded by thorny weeds and twisted, bleached vines.
Image: How the home looked before Sudan’s war
Image: And how it looks now
The neighbour’s once lush garden is barren too.
Their tall palm trees at the front of the house have been beheaded – rounding off into a greyish stump instead of lush fronds.
Everyone in Khartoum is coming back to a game of Russian roulette. Searching out their houses to confirm suspicions of whether it was blasted, burned or punctured with bullets.
Many homes were looted and bruised by nearby combat but some are still standing. Others have been completely destroyed.
Image: How the home looked before the war
Image: And how it looks now
The outside of our house looks smooth from the street but has a crack in the base of the front wall visible from up close.
It is likely a bomb fell nearby and shook the house at its base – a reminder of the airstrikes and shelling that my parents and their neighbours fled.
Inside, the damage is choking.
Most of the furniture has been taken except a few lone couches.
The carpets and curtains have been stripped. The electrical panels and wiring pulled out. The appliances, dishes, glasses and spices snatched from the kitchens.
Image: Yousra shows her mother pictures found in the home
The walls are bare apart from the few items they decided to spare. Ceilings have been punctured and cushions torn open in their hunt for hidden gold.
The walls are marked with the names of RSF troops that came in and out of this house like it was their own.
The home that has been the centre of our life in Sudan is a shell.
Image: Sudan’s war has left the country fractured
Glimmers of hope
The picture of sheer wreckage settles and signs of familiarity come into focus.
A family photo album that is 20 years old.
The rocking chair my mother cradled me and my sister in. My university certificate.
Image: Yousra finds her university certificate in the wreckage
Celebratory snaps of my siblings’ weddings. Books my brother has had since the early nineties.
The painting above my bed that I have pined over during the two years – custom-made and gifted to me for my 24th birthday and signed by my family on the back.
There are signs of dirt and damage on all these items our looters discarded but it is enough.
Image: Yousra’s parents pictured at home before they fled Khartoum
Evidence of material destruction but a reminder of what we can hope will endure.
The spirit of the people that gathered to laugh, cry and break bread in these rooms.
Image: A portrait of Yousra’s grandmother damaged by RSF troops
The hospitality and warmth of a Sudanese home with an open door.
The community and sense of togetherness that can never truly be robbed.
What remains in our hearts and our city is a sign of what will get us through.
A few days later, I spoke to Mr Zelenskyy in person when he confided to me that maybe he would have to step down if NATO could guarantee Ukraine membership – a man who perhaps sensed he could never win against a hostile Mr Trump.
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5:07
Sky News meets Zelenskyy: The key moments
Yet, fast-forward to last weekend in Rome, and an iconic picture of the two men in close conversation at the Pope’s funeral.
This time round, it is Russian President Vladimir Putin on the receiving end of the presidential anger, blaming him for the fact that “too many people are dying!”
Image: Trump and Zelenskyy talk in the Vatican. Pic: AP
To Trump’s supporters, this is the smart negotiator, constantly repositioning himself as new information comes in, prior to pulling off a spectacular deal.
To his many detractors, it indicates a dangerous incoherence that is replicated in other key areas, including tariffs as well as his relationship with his allies in Europe and his foes in Beijing.
Flexible or fallible; in control or all at sea? In the fast and furious world of Donald Trump, it’s almost impossible to call.
The only constants are his unwavering self-belief, or as the man himself says: “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
A paramedic in Gaza who was detained for more than five weeks following an Israeli attack that killed 15 aid workers has been released, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said.
Asaad al Nsasrah was one of 17 aid workers who were attacked in Tel al Sultan in southern Gaza by Israeli forces on 23 March.
Asaad was one of two first responders who survived – the other 15 were killed.
He was initially thought to be missing, as his body was not among the dead. It was not until 13 April, three weeks after the attack, that Israel confirmed Asaad was alive and in Israeli detention.
The PRCS announced Asaad’s release on X and shared a video of him reuniting with colleagues.
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Sky News has seen images showing Asaad, among other released Palestinians, in a grey tracksuit at al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, where he is undergoing medical examination, according to the PRCS.
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19:54
How two hours of terror unfolded
The PRCS claimed the Israeli military’s investigation was “full of lies”.
Asaad’s voice can be heard in a video, initially published by the New York Times, that shows the moments leading up to the attack on the aid workers.
The video was discovered on Rifaat Radwaan’s phone, which was found on his body by rescue workers five days after the attack.
Among those killed were one UN worker, eight paramedics from the PRCS and six first responders from Civil Defence – the official fire and rescue service of Gaza’s Hamas-led government.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.