Annular solar eclipse, 07 February
5 Feb at 16:01 by Wilson
This Thursday we’ll have the first solar eclipse of 2008, but very few people will actually see more than a very small partial eclipse. It won’t be a total eclipse, but an annular one: this happens when the Moon is not large enough in the sky to cover the whole disk of the Sun (when seen from what would normally be the path of totality, the Sun will form a ring around the disk of the Moon).
The path of “annularity” covers just part of Antarctica and some areas of the southern Pacific; the annular phase starts at 03:20 UTC and ends at 04:30 UTC. A partial eclipse will be visible from eastern Australia, New Zealand and neighbouring island countries. From Melbourne, the eclipse will start at 2:38pm (local time) and end at 4:14pm; the maximum eclipse will happen at 3:28pm, but just a bit more than 8% of the Sun will be obscured, so it will be barely noticeable (and the forecast says it will be raining, anyway); add about 15 minutes to these times if you are in Sydney (and you’ll see just over 11% of the Sun being obscured). For more details and for information about other locations, see the excellent website of the Nautical Almanac Office of the UK.
NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN, neither with your naked eyes nor with binoculars or telescopes unless they are correctly fitted with the proper filters; if in doubt, don’t to it.
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