The solar eclipse that will take place on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 will be a total eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 1.080 that will be visible from a narrow corridor through northern India, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, the northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean, including the Ryukyu Islands, Marshall Islands and Kiribati. The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century has sparked tourist fever in eastern China, which according to experts is the best place to view the event.[1][2][3] Totality will be visible in many large cities, including Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Dinajpur, Chengdu, Nanchong, Chongqing, Yichang, Jingzhou, Wuhan, Huanggang, Hefei, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo and Shanghai, as well as over the Three Gorges Dam.[4][5] A partial eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including most of South East Asia (all of India and China) and north-eastern Oceania. The eclipse is part of series 136 in the Saros cycle, like the record setting Solar eclipse of July 11, 1991.
This is second in the series of three eclipses in a month. There was a lunar eclipse on July 7 and now a solar eclipse on July 22 and then a lunar eclipse on August 6.
This solar eclipse is the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the twenty-first century, and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132. Totality will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds, with the maximum eclipse occurring in the ocean at 02:35:21 UTC about 100 km south of the Bonin Islands, southeast of Japan. The North Iwo Jima island is the landmass with totality time closest to maximum.
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/TSE2009/TSE2009.html.
Elvis bought me a specs to view the eclipse. It looks like those 3D paper specs, but has a silver foil instead of those green/red bits. I saw on TV that you can also use X-Ray films to view - so as to protect your naked eyes. Okay, we do have lots of X-Ray films at home. Becoz the doctors here like to take X-Rays - even for a cough. I have everything from A5 to A3 size! Haha!
3 comments:
Wow! Once in a lifetime event. And you get to watch it! How cool!
too bad we cant see in SIN>..
check out my Facebook uploads. i will post some pictures here later.
we didnt really get to see it coz it was very cloudy and raining too. the sun was completely covered. but the total darkness came about 9.40am - an hour later than forecasted. We kinda gave up hope by then coz we were up by 8am to catch it. still, it was quite cool to experience day-night-day within 6 minutes!
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