Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going to be taking a look at the annular solar eclipse that is happening today. It may have just happened today or is about to happen today. While you’re reading this piece, it may still be in progress. Looking at the sky from here in Ireland, we can already see that the New Moon is very close to being in front of the Sun. Of course, this isn’t something you would be able to see with the naked eye, but the New Moon is very close to being in front of the Sun. To save a little bit of time, we’re going to go straight to the best location to see this eclipse. This means going south, to 64 degrees south, somewhere down around the coast of Antarctica.

We’re going to 64.7 degrees south, so that’s 64 degrees and 0.7 of a degree, so 70% of a degree. That’s not the same as 64 degrees and 7 seconds and you can’t have 70 seconds, 60 is the most you can get. Off the top of my head, I went with around 50, which is not exactly correct. 42 seconds would be 70% of 60, but it is still pretty close. The decimal display of angle is a bit different, so the decimal point values vary a little bit from the actual arc minutes and second values. We also want to be at 86.8 degrees in latitude. 86 degrees is easy, for the point eight, I went with 55, though that is a little bit closer to a point nine, but still correct enough for an eclipse. In Stellarium’s location panel, you can enter a location in decimal degrees rather than degrees, minutes and seconds, but degrees, minutes and seconds are the default and they’re what I’m a little bit more comfortable with so I will stick with those. That should bring us to roughly the right location, but I made a slight mistake that we will get to ina second. We’re at least in roughly the right location, right on the edge of Antarctica and we should be in the right location to get the peak of the annular eclipse.

Thanks to the fact that we are looking at this eclipse while we’re coming into northern spring, the Sun gets very low but it will come back up after being under the horizon briefly. We get true darkness and then the Sun comes back up again. As we are so close to spring time, that means that the Sun is going to be pretty low even at its highest, this is really southern autumn time,getting back to winter and darkness. Despite putting in almost the exact coordinates as I found them, no annular eclipse occurred. That is due to my mistake. We’re supposed to be at 86 degrees east, rather than west. Hopping over to the other side of the Antarctic continent fixes this, bring ing us to 86 degrees east rather than 86 degrees west. That is hopefully correct and has brought us to the exact right location to see the annular eclipse.

It does, letting us catch an absolutely perfect annular eclipse. In the most recent previous piece, we discussed the annular part of a hybrid eclipse and it was much more obscured. Today’s eclipse is a much better example of an annular eclipse, there is a lot more of the Sun visible around the edges. The eclipse obscuration is 92.8% and the Moon-Sun diameter ratio is 0.963. This ratio of 0.963 is a lot further away from the one-to-one ratio that we would need for a total eclipse, and it’s a lot further away from one-to-one than the annular part of the hybrid eclipse that we most recently looked at. It’s lasting a little bit longer as well, this is 2 minutes and 20 seconds of an eclipse. Even the total portion of the hybrid eclipse we looked at last time only lasted for about a minute. These shorter eclipses are pretty normal. From the best location, we’re seeing the annular eclipse perfectly. It’s a perfect annular eclipse, there’s a little bit of the Sun still shining around the Moon, the Moon is completely in the way, but the sky still isn’t completely dark. It’s only 92% really of an eclipse, almost 93%, so it cannot be as dark as a 100% total eclipse. Based on the curve that I was seeing, I thought that this eclipse was going to be visible from the south island of New Zealand as well, but it looks like it’s actually going to be more visible on the other side of the eclipse path, around the bottom of Africa.

To see this path, we’re going to hop out to the Moon and take a look at the shadow of this eclipse passing across the Earth’s surface from the Moon. That will give us the best view of the shadow’s path. We will go to a location that is definitely facing the Earth, pretty much on the exact middle of the face of the Moon that’s definitely going to be facing the Earth. We’re at the exact middle of the light side of the Moon, the side that always faces the Earth. Zooming in on the Earth, it is fully illuminated because it is the daytime portion of the Earth at which we are looking. We are looking at the southern portion of the world, and moving around a little lets us see the shadow. Over the course of the eclipse, there is a dark spot moving across Antarctica, the shadow of this annular eclipse. Even though it is an annular eclipse, it is still producing a shaded portion of the Earth, even though it’s not going to be as blocked out or as dark as a total eclipse, there’s still enough obscuration to produce just a little bit of a shadow passing across the Antarctic.

Coming back to the Earth, we’re going to head to the very southernmost tip of South Africa, just to see if we can get some visibility of the eclipse from there. We’re going to hop right down here to the southern tip of South Africa, the southernmost tip of southern Africa and the southernmost tip of South Africa, roughly at least. Taking a closer look and we’re getting a partial eclipse. It’s not much, but it is definitely a partial. A little bit of the Sun gets obscured by the Moon. It is only a very small partial eclipse, but this is one of the best locations to see it where you’re actually going to be on dry land. The total obscuration is just 9.66%, not even 10%, so it’s a tiny amount of the Sun being obscured, but still achievable. I saw it written in a few different sources on the Internet that the southernmost portion of Chile and Argentina would also see a partial eclipse, but given that these continents, given that those countries in South America are so far from the path of the eclipse, I’m surprised. Nonetheless, it does happen, technically at least. If we zoom in on the Sun and Moon, we are getting a little bit of an eclipse. It’s slight enough that Stellarium doesn’t seem to be registering it, it’s not showing us the amount of obscuration, but there is definitely a little bit of obscuration happening just there.

The eclipse is definitely visible at those locations, if only barely, so let’s just see if we can catch any of it at all from the southernmost tip of the south island of New Zealand as well. At the time of the eclipse, everything’s under the horizon. Even getting things up above the horizon again, it does look like the Moon is just a little bit too far from the Sun. Moving through a couple of days just in case we’re after pushing things in the wrong direction lets us double check, but no, it doesn’t look like the eclipse is visible at all. The Moon does get pretty close to the Sun, but unfortunately, any amount of obscuration isn’t happening until the Sun is under the horizon for this location. So it does look like this one is really only going to be visible, in any reasonable sense of the word, from right on the edge of Antarctica, but at least you’ve gotten an idea of what the eclipse would look like. We’ll get back to roughly the right location, to see the eclipse as it would look if you were in the ideal location. The annular eclipse is still perfect, even if we’re not in the perfect location. This is the annular eclipse that is happening, at just about 6 o’clock at UTC +5.47. Stellarium indicates a timezone that is close to UTC+5.45, which is a timezone used in Nepal. This would be almost 6 hours before this piece goes up at 6pm UTC, close to midday UTC. If you are reading this piece, the eclipse presumably has just happened.

This is the annular eclipse that is happening or about to happen today. I am confident that you didn’t get a chance to see it because so few parts of the world will get a chance to see it. There is a chance, if you were in the very southern tip of South Africa or the very southern tip of South America, you may have gotten a chance to see it, but at least you have gotten a description of it here. I hope that you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please do like it. If you like this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.