Most of the world usually only encounters a partial solar eclipse, depending on when and where the eclipse takes place. The darkest part of a total solar eclipse is nearly as dark as night.
Advertisement
The next two eclipse seasons don’t offer much: an annular eclipse on September 1 crosses south-central Africa and a large swath of the western Indian Ocean, and another annular eclipse on February 26, 2017, crosses the southern Atlantic Ocean and parts of far southern South America and southwestern Africa.
The eclipse will be visible to people in South Asia, East Asia, and Australia.
“The Mindanao areas will have a good view of the partial solar eclipse, having an eclipse obscuration of up to 80 percent while the Luzon and the Visayas areas’ eclipse obscuration ranges from 30 to 60 percent and 60 to 70 percent respectively”, Pagasa said.
“The moon blocks the light of the sun’s surface very, very precisely”, Sarah Jaeggli, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. The longest duration of totality, slightly over four minutes, will be visible from a spot in the Pacific Ocean about a thousand miles north-northeast of Papua New Guinea.
Sky watchers may look out for a partial solar eclipse and penumbral lunar eclipse this month, the state weather bureau said. This will be the first total eclipse to cross the continental USA since 1979, and is certainly something for which to mark one’s calendar. However, more than three hours will pass between the time it hits the westernmost location and the time it hits the easternmost location.
“This time Indonesia is the best place to observe the eclipse,”said Dang Tuan Duy, from the HCM City Amateur Astronomers’ Club (HAAC)”. The last time this total solar eclipse happened was during on June 8, 1918.
In Taipei, the eclipse will begin at 8:19:27 a.m., reach its maximum point at 9:14:50 a.m. and end at 10:15:19 a.m, according to the observatory.
Advertisement
If you are not in the solar eclipse visibility belt, you check out this live broadcast from Micronesia, or head over to Solar Dynamics Laboratory website to marvel at this celestial spectacle.
