AsianScientist (May 21, 2012) – Early Monday morning in Asia, hundreds of millions of people will witness an annular eclipse of the sun – visible from within a narrow corridor along Earth’s northern Hemisphere – beginning in eastern Asia, crossing the North Pacific Ocean, and ending in the western United States.
A partial eclipse will be visible from a much larger region covering East Asia, North Pacific, North America and Greenland.
During an annular eclipse the moon covers as much as 94 percent of the sun, and leaves a bright ring of light visible at the edges.
For the May eclipse, the moon will be at the furthest distance from Earth that it ever achieves – meaning that it will block the smallest possible portion of the sun, and leave the largest possible bright ring around the outside.
A joint JAXA/NASA Hinode mission will observe the eclipse and provide images and movies on the NASA website at http://www.nasa.gov/sunearth. As an added bonus, Hinode’s X-ray Telescope will be able to provide images of the peaks and valleys of the lunar surface.
The next solar eclipse will take place on November 13, 2012.
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Source: NASA; Photo: HINODE/XRT January 6, 2011 eclipse.
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