Rare solar eclipse darkens Asia on the summer solstice
- by Carmen Reese
- in Science
- — Dec 13, 2020
The path of the eclipse spanned East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. A few prominent places within this narrow annularity path are Dehradun, Kurukshetra, Chamoli, Joshimath, Sirsa, Suratgarh. With this ideal alignment, the Moon's shadow sweeps across the surface of Earth. However, the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun. It will take four hours for the shadow of the moon to move across the surface of the Earth.
While the eclipse will be a valuable experience, extra caution is required. The moon is not able to cover the sun entirely because it is in its apogee or its furthest point from the Earth. "However, there has to be more study on the impact of eclipse on birds", he added.
"An eclipse is kind of a rare event".
The annular solar eclipse in Assam will start at 10.51 am at Srirampur and end at Jagun at 2.23 pm.
"It's a truly magical moment to witness the "Ring of Fire" appear as the Moon is centered over the Sun's disk".
The distance between Earth and the Moon at the moment of the eclipse can dictate the type of eclipse. Sounding like the trailer to a horror movie, but much more impressive and considerably less risky: day will turn into night, birds may stop singing, sunset will appear all around you, stars and planets will become visible in the darkened sky, and the otherwise hidden solar corona will become visible as white rays streaming out from around the dark lunar disk.
The solar eclipse will be visible as an annular solar eclipse in Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Haryana.
The coast-to-coast eclipse on August 21 of that year carved a 70-mile wide path of totality from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic, with hordes of people donning solar eclipse glasses to experience the unusual event. But the clouds had covered the sun.
However, since the moon is farthest from the earth today, it fails to cover the sun completely and leaves out its rims to be visible, causing a ring of fire effect. This gives an image of a ring of fire.
As a result, astronomers often refer to it as a ring of fire eclipse. "It would be visible in the western part of India". There are special goggles made for looking at the Sun.
The Science Society has urged the people to not view the eclipse directly even with the help of binoculars and telescopes.
