Millions of people across Indonesia and the Pacific are about to be treated to a total solar eclipse.
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“It was very annoying that we couldn’t see the sun properly”, said David Pratama, 18, as jeers of disappointment rose up in the crowd around him as the moon moved across the sun.
“People bathe in Ganges in order to wash away the impurities that are generated 12 hours prior to the eclipse”.
Members of the public gathered at places such as Science Center Singapore to view partial solar eclipse, an unusual astronomical event, from Singapore’s skies on Wednesday.
A partial eclipse is seen in Kathmandu on March 9, 2016.
Check out more views of the eclipse below. The moon blacked out the sun in totality over Indonesia’s main western island of Sumatra, before moving eastwards across Sulawesi and Borneo, and then over to the Maluku Islands.
From Indonesia, they will use an instrument called a polarization camera to capture 59 exposures of the Sun in just over three minutes, collecting data on the innermost parts of the sun’s volatile, superheated atmosphere.
A total solar eclipse is seen in Belitung, Indonesia, Wednesday, March 9, 2016.
Across the ocean, a plane full of eclipse chasers also got the chance to see the event, but from air rather than land.
In Ternate, in the eastern Maluku Islands, thousands of people yelled “Glory to God” as the total eclipse became visible, while on the small Mentawai archipelago in the west of the country, hundreds cheered, prayed and hugged one another during the spectacle. The next total eclipse will occur in August 2017 and be visible over North America.
Most eclipses are partial but when the moon is close enough to the Earth, the sun is completely eclipsed by the moon’s shadow and only a spectacular ring of rays known as the corona is visible.
In the capital, Jakarta, thousands of residents packed a planetarium at a downtown park where officials distributed about 4,000 filtered viewing glasses that quickly ran out. Scientists say next year’s eclipse will likely be the best-observed eclipse in human history.
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“It is now dark here, but unfortunately, we can not see the sun”.
