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Partial Solar Eclipse Friday
Pankaj Arora writes "To those in the South Pacific (USA) and certain parts of the Americas, Friday, April 8th marks the day of the first solar eclipse of 2005. From the article: "It will be a partial eclipse rather than a total one, in which the Earth is cast into darkness. But it will be the last partial solar eclipse visible from the continental United States until May 20, 2012." Also, see other related stories."
"The maximum eclipse visible from the continental United States will be in Miami, where nearly half of the sun's diameter will be covered at 6:20 p.m. EDT."
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Our scientists, who can predeict when an eclipse will occur, also reckon the end of the world is about 5 billion years away. At this point the nuclear fusion process in the sun will run out of "steam" and the stars core will contract while the outer layers expand to engulf the inner planets (including the earth).
Just to be clear...
0 05/HSE2005.html
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEmono/HSE2
This is also a Hybrid solar eclipse, the path of which runs through Panama. It starts out Annular over the ocean, goes to total over the ocean, and resumes annular through Panama. So parts of the Americas will also see an annular eclipse.
This is a relatively rare event, the next of which will occurr on Nov. 3, 2013.
There are several groups webcasting this event from Panama.
Don't hold your breath for the next total eclipse. It won't happen in the US until 2017.
However, if you're willing to travel, there will be one in March 2006. Come visit sunny Libya, meet the Colonel, and try to counter the angry natives who want to waste your American ass by threatening to "use your magic western technology to blot out the sun".
Seriously, though, watching a total eclipse is something that will mark a defining point in your life as an astronomy geek. I pilgrimaged to Paris in 1999 to see the eclipse back then(I live in Denmark, so it wasn't that big a trip). I had to sit in a train that was crammed with people Indian style to get to the totality zone, and when it finally occurred, the one single goddamn cloud on an otherwise clear sky obstructed my view of the halo.
So I guess I'll go for Libya. Or maybe Turkey.
I'm jealous. The next total solar eclipse that I expect to see is August 23rd 2044. (Calgary Canada)
t h2001/SE2044Aug23T.html
The "sunearth" NASA web site is a great site for seeing what eclipses hit your part of the earth over the next hundred years or so...
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEpath/SEpa
It annoys me when people do this. Whether it's Americans forgetting the existence of the rest of the world, or northern hemisphere residents being blind to the existence of the southern hemisphere, it's really annoying. It's even worse when such a cavalier parochial attitude leads to factual errors.
As to the eclipse itself, it is an unusual type of eclipse known as an annular/total eclipse. The vertex of the moon's shadow will actually intersect the surface of the earth during the eclipse. Thus, people at both ends will see a narrow annular eclipse, and people in the middle will see a short-duration total eclipse. Even though the majority of the eclipse path is over the Pacific ocean, die-hard eclipse-chasers will have rented ships to observe the eclipse because of its unusual nature.
The most interesting points on the eclipse path is where the nature of the eclipse is intermediate between annular and total. When the apparent size of the Sun is larger than the bottoms of the lunar valleys, but smaller than the mountaintops of the moon, you get a broken annular eclipse of just a few seconds' duration.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Here is a hi-res map of the eclipse path: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/eclipse/map105.p df