Ring Of Fire: Indian Ocean To See Solar Eclipse - PICTURES

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                                        Ring of fire: Indian Ocean to see solar eclipse
     





Fri Jan 23, 2009
PARIS
(AFP)

– A few lucky people in the Indian Ocean will be treated to a rare event on Monday when an annular solar eclipse will transform the Sun into a dark disc with a blazing ring-shaped corona around its rim.

In solar eclipses, the Moon moves between the Sun and Earth, casting its shadow on the terrestrial surface.

In an annular eclipse, a tiny shift in distance that results from celestial mechanics means the Moon does not completely cover the Sun's face, as it does in a total eclipse.

Instead, for those directly under the alignment, the Moon covers most of the Sun's surface, and a ring-like crown of solar light blazes from the edge of the disk.

For those watching from the fringe of the track, the Sun is partially obscured, as if a bite has been taken out of it.

According to veteran NASA eclipse-watcher Fred Espenak, the total eclipse track will run from west to east on Monday from 0606 GMT to 0952 GMT.

It will traverse the Indian Ocean and western Indonesia before petering out just short of Mindanao, the Philippines.

The partial eclipse will be seen in a much wider swathe, including the southern third of Africa, Madagascar, Australia, Southeast India, Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

It will be the only annular solar eclipse this year. The last was on 7 February, 2007, and after Monday, the next one will be on 15 January, 2010.

The big event for eclipse junkies this year is on July 22, when a total solar eclipse will be visible from India and China, the world's two most populous countries.


Annual solar eclipse of Jan 26

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                                                  Solar Eclipse "Ring" Seen Over Indonesia   







http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1003_051003_solar_eclipse.html

Video in the News: Eclipse Makes "Ring of Fire" in Sky

January 26, 2009
The National Geographic

--The dark disk of the moon creeps across the setting sun during the first solar eclipse of 2009, as seen on Monday from Manila Bay in the Philippines.

People viewing from the southern Indian Ocean were among the few to see the full annular eclipse, so called because at its peak the eclipse is surrounded by an annulus, or ring, of fiery light.

Because the moon's orbit is elliptical, its distance from Earth--and thus its apparent size--varies over time. Annular eclipses happen when the moon looks too small to completely cover the sun, an event that occurs about 66 times a century.

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A sequence of photos shows the moon passing between Earth and the sun before, during, and after an annular eclipse, as seen on January 26, 2009, from Bandar Lampung in Indonesia.

The path of the full annular eclipse crossed mostly open ocean in the southern part of the globe, starting about 560 miles (900 kilometers) south of Africa and not reaching land until it crossed Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean (see map).

Still, observers in southern Africa, Madagascar, Australia, and Southeast Asia were able to watch a partial eclipse.

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Astronomer Jay Pasachoff used a specially equipped camera to capture images of the January 26, 2009, annular eclipse from the Indonesian island of Java.

Pasachoff, chair of the International Astronomical Union's working group on eclipses, has received funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration to study the sun during the total solar eclipse on July 22, 2009. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

"There is little scientific research that can be done at annular eclipses, unlike the situation with total solar eclipses, when otherwise invisible parts of the sun come into view," Pasachoff told National Geographic News in an email.

But annular eclipses can be important, he added, for practicing photography techniques and for getting the public excited about astronomy.

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Haze blurs the bright ring around an annular eclipse on January 26, 2009.

The image was captured from Anyer Beach on the Indonesian island of Java, one of the few places where the solar eclipse was completely visible.

Crowds gathered across Indonesia to witness the event, some cheering and banging drums as the moon seemed to cross the face of the sun, the Associated Press reported.

"I'm old, but I still think this is magical," resident Roanna Makmur, 66, told the AP. "Anyone who passed up this opportunity really missed out."