Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Longest Solar Eclipse a Once in a Lifetime Occurrence



The longest solar eclipse of this century will occur on Wednesday, July 22, 2009.

Large areas of India and China are expected to go dark for a period of about five minutes.

Scores of visitors are expected to travel into the area to witness and study the rare event.

On Wednesday, July 22, 2009, some parts of the world will be witnessing one of the most spectacular celestial phenomenon of total solar eclipse of the 21st century. This total solar eclipse which will occur due to the hiding of the Sun behind the Moon will turn the day into dark for about 6 minutes and 58 seconds.

This total solar eclipse will be visible in India, especially in the following cities-Surat, Baroda, Indore, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Danapur and Guwahati. A partial eclipse can be seen in Southeast Asia including over entire India and China.

People of the Udupi district can also see nearly 75 per cent of the solar eclipse. According to a report the greatest phase of partial eclipse will be at 6 hours 20 minutes and will last till 7 hours 16 minutes.

The Taregna village near Danapur in the district of Patna in Bihar has become the focus of the astronomers as they believe that the total solar eclipse can be seen in its full glory. It is said that the ancient astronomer, Aryabhatta, who was born in Pataliputra (modern Patna) in 476 AD used to observe the heavenly bodies from this village.

The total solar eclipse of July 22 2009 will be visible across south-east Asia and the western Pacific. This will be a spectacular total eclipse, lasting over 6½ minutes at maximum and visible to millions of people over a path up to 258 km wide.

The total eclipse begins just off the coast of India at 00:51:17 UT on July 22, and ends in Polynesia at 04:19:26 UT on July 22. The maximum eclipse is at 02:35:21 UT on July 22, when the total phase will last a stunning 6 minutes and 39 seconds. The partial eclipse will be visible over south-east Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Pacific between 23:58:19 UT on July 21 and 05:12:25 UT on July 22.


No comments:

Post a Comment