Breaking Solar News
Image credit: Larry Koehn.
Sept 17, 2006
SOLAR ECLIPSE: When the day begins in South America on Friday, Sept. 22nd, something won't be quite right: the rising sun will be shaped like a crescent. It's the beginning of an annular solar eclipse
Annular eclipses occur when the Moon passes straight in front of the sun but fails to cover the entire solar disk. A sliver of sun pokes out in all directions producing a vivid ring of fire. This is what's going to happen on Friday.
Unfortunately, almost all of the eclipse takes place over uninhabited ocean. The red line in Larry Koehn's map, above, traces the "path of annularity" where the sun will become a ring for about 7 minutes. Only in a tiny swath of Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana will the ring of fire be visible from land: map.
Elsewhere, the Moon will cross the sun off-center, producing not a ring but a crescent. At daybreak, people in South America will see a crescent sunrise; later in the day crescent sunbeams will dapple the ground in Africa.
Get the full story from NASA.
