People in South Asia, East Asia and the north and east of Australia may see a partial eclipse.
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Table showing the times and places for the partial solar eclipse on March 9 taken from the National Planetarium’s website.
Palu, a city on the Indonesian island Sulawesi, has planned an eclipse festival, and 10 other cities have promoted themselves as total eclipse destinations.
Given few people will be able to see the totality of the eclipse, there are a number of online resources available.
The total eclipse is visible within a roughly 100-150 kilometer (62-93 mile) -wide path that begins in the Indian Ocean and slices across parts of Indonesia including Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi before ending in the northern Pacific Ocean.
But the curious aspect is that the eclipse, caused by the shadow of the moon, will start on March 9, and end on March 8. This week’s eclipse is happening while the moon is at its closest point to Earth – called perigee – an effect of its elliptical orbit around Earth. A penumbra is defined as the partially shaded outer region of a shadow that an object casts.
On Wednesday, the moon will block the sun creating a total solar eclipse that will go across the Pacific Ocean from Indonesia to Hawaii.
The sun and the moon will then part ways over the next hour and the eclipse will officially be completely over at 8:32 am.
A chart showing the exact areas where tomorrow’s eclipse will be visible.
For the viewer, the length of time the sun was totally eclipsed depended on their location along the path. The moments in which the sun was entirely eclipsed lasted between 90 seconds and 4 minutes though on land the durations were mostly between 1 and 3 minutes.
In Jakarta, we will see the sun first start to overlap with the moon at about 6:20 am on Wednesday morning.
NASA will be providing a live telecast of the only total solar eclipse of the year 2016. Under no circumstances should an eclipse be viewed directly through binoculars or a telescope, according to NASA, as the lens could intensify the sun’s rays and injure the viewer’s eyes.
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But the maximum duration will be experienced by the people in the Philippines, more precisely the ones who live on the eastern side of Manila. Exploring the resources is a good opportunity to prepare for the August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse over North America.
