The total solar eclipse will be of longest duration during this century. It will be visible in India, some of the Japanese islands, China and Pacific Ocean. The eclipse begins with the sunrise in the western part of India, travels to eastern part of India, crosses to Myna-mar (Burma), small islands of Japan and China. In India Surat, Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Varanasi and Patna are some of the cities lie close to the central part of the totality. In China duration of the totality will be about 5 minutes. In India altitude of the sun will be about 15 degrees in the eastern part at the time of total eclipse and this period is full of rains due to South West monsoon.
Imaging of the solar corona has the advantages of providing the information over two dimensional region of the solar corona but it may have the small uncertainty of in the data due to variations in the sky transparency. On the other hand spectroscopy provides data only on the small portion of the solar corona but with spectral purity and is possible to account for the variations in the sky transparency. Line profiles can also yield information about the temperature and non-thermal structure of the solar corona.
A Purna Surya Grahan passing over some of Earth's most densely populated regions on Wednesday, July 22, 2009, may become the most viewed eclipse ever.
People across central India and in parts of Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar will briefly find themselves in daytime darkness before the solar eclipse proceeds into China.
Most of the best viewing opportunities are in China, where some 30 million people will be able to witness the solar eclipse in the coastal cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou alone, according to veteran eclipse scientist Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Massachusetts.
The eclipse will then continue east, passing over Japan's Ryukyu Islands before reaching its maximum duration point over the Pacific Ocean, where the sun will be completely blocked by the moon for 6 minutes and 39 seconds, according to NASA scientist Fred Espenak.
Thousands of overseas tourists and potentially millions of Chinese are flocking to areas along the eclipse path, where hotels are charging higher rates, according to Chinese media reports.
The July 2009 total solar eclipse is expected to have the longest duration of totality in the 21st century, experts say, and should give Pasachoff plenty of data to keep him and his team busy for months.
Pasachoff will see only about five and half minutes of totality from a site in eastern China, but "once you have five minutes-plus of totality, the extra minute that we could have [seen] is not significant," he added.
This year there have already been two eclipses - of the Sun on Jan 26 and of the Moon on Feb 9 respectively. During July/August 2009, we shall be witnessing three eclipses in a row. However, there is nothing to be alarmed about. The orbits and positions of the Moon and the Earth with respect to the Sun can make it happen. In fact two consecutive eclipses in a year are more common. A lunar eclipse happens on a Full Moon day. A solar eclipse takes place on a New Moon day. The last time triple eclipses took place was in the year 2000. Ever since, there have been many doubles in the subsequent years.
In the year 2009, the triplet occurs as follows:
1. Jul 7, 2009 Penumbral lunar eclipse - it occurs during 14:08 - 16:09 hrs IST and so, not visible from India.
2. Jul 22, 2009 Total solar eclipse - starting early morning; total eclipse is to be visible from locations in India falling in the path of totality; partial eclipse will be visible all over India; for more details please visit www.iiap.res.in.
3. Aug 6-7, 2009 Penumbral lunar eclipse - it occurs during 04:34 - 07:44 hrs IST on the 7th Aug, visible from India around Moonset time.
The sixth eclipse of the year will be a partial lunar eclipse, on the night of Dec 31, 2009/Jan 1 2010. It shall occur during 22:47 - 02:58 hrs IST and therefore be visible from India.
Do you remember or have read about the total solar eclipse of Feb 16, 1980? The path of totality passed over India making it the first total solar eclipse of the century to be observed from India. In independent India, scientists, teachers and students from various research and educational institutions, universities and schools for the first time ever went about in large numbers to study so extensively the greatest spectacle nature offers the mankind with whatever equipments they could procure or make. While it is the corona of the Sun that is the most important entity of interest to the solar astronomer, visible for a very short duration of the totality, the impact of the event is not limited to the world of science alone. It is far reaching and multidimensional. The awareness a natural phenomenon and its scientific study generates is phenomenal. In that sense the Feb 16, 1980 eclipse was a great awakener post Independence that created an unprecedented excitement among persons from all walks of life. The path of totality fell over places in India such as Hubli, Raichur, Nalgonda and Konark etc.
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics established camps for observations at Hosur near Hubli and at Jawalgera near Raichur, in Karnataka. A distinct feature at the Jawalgera Camp was a massive all steel 68 feet tower which housed specific experimental installations. An optical system consisting of a coelostat and a lens placed atop the tower was to send the image of the eclipsed Sun to its bottom, converted into a basement laboratory with thatched walls. Here the IIA astronomers had installed a flash spectrograph in order to analyze the chromospheric and coronal radiation. All in all, there were seven experiments to be conducted. Camping with IIA were Czech and Yugoslav teams that set up experiments of their own. The Czechs had brought their equipment from Czechoslovakia in a caravan of cars and trucks via Iran and Pakistan in 25 days.
A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total eclipses.[1] Total solar eclipses are nevertheless rare at any location because during each eclipse totality exists only along a narrow corridor in the relatively tiny area of the Moon's umbra.
On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth which includes most of eastern Asia, and the Pacific Ocean. The total solar eclipse of 22nd of July 2009 will be the longest eclipse of the 21st Century being 6 minutes 38 seconds at the point of maximum eclipse. The occurrences of total solar eclipses are still important, not withstanding the invention of coronagraph in 1930 and number of space instruments launched in space to make the observations of solar corona in EUV, soft X-ray and low resolution broad band images. The total solar eclipses provide minimum of scattered light about 1000 times less than that in the coronagraphs. Also observations can be made with high spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions as compared to those of space base instruments because large and heavy equipment can be used in ground base observations.
The temperature in the solar corona rises to million degrees from about 5700 degrees at the photospheric level. Some models have been proposed to explain the heating of solar corona but the existing models are unable to explain all the physical and dynamical properties of the solar corona. It has been recognized that magnetic fields play an important role in heating up the plasma in the solar corona but identification of the process or processes still remains an open question. It has been proposed that occurrence of micro or nano flares at the surface of the sun can create shock waves and contribute to the heating of solar corona but some have argued that these waves get dissipated in the chromosphere itself and cannot reach the corona. The existence of fast or slow mode magneto-hydrodynamic waves in the solar corona is expected to cause intensity and velocity oscillations in the solar corona in the range of 1 Hz and lower frequencies. Many attempts have been made to detect these oscillations but the results are contradictory. A large number of small-scale reconnections have also been proposed to explain the heating of solar corona. Another way to heat the solar corona is to generate waves through turbulence (acousting waves). The existence of non-thermal motion in the solar corona and its variation with height has also been interpreted to cause heating of the plasma in the solar corona.
A long wait by sky gazers to look at a rare celestial event will end tomorrow (July 22) when the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century will be seen in Indian cities like Surat, Indore, Bhopal, Varanasi and Patna. July 22nd promises a solar eclipse that will be visible in many regions in India. The moon will hide the main disc of the sun and only the outer portions will be visible and this promises to be an amazing sight.
Occurring at the sunrise on July 22 morning in the region, this rare celestial activity will start from Surat in Gujarat and towards parts of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, then covering Gaya in Bihar with clearest view and culminate in Dibrugarh in Assam, till 10.30 am. The journey of the partial view of the solar eclipse in the region can be seen from 5.30 am to 7.30 am.
Solar eclipses have been occuring since times immemorial. The solar eclipse occuring on July 22 would be the longest one to occur and the last eclipse of this century.
The phenomenon happens when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. A solar eclipse can only happen during a new moon when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction with each other.
And, the world is preparing for the grand event. In Japan, hundreds of Japanese are flocking to the southern island of Akuseki, which is to witness the total eclipse. The Akuseki island will plunge into darkness for more than six minutes. The phenomenon will be visible in other parts of Japan, but the view from Akuseki is said to be the longest total eclipse out of all areas in the country.
China's financial capital Shanghai gears up for what is set to be the longest total solar eclipse this century. The total eclipse can be seen in some parts of China. According to the astronomers, the total eclipse will plunge shanghai into darkness for more than six minutes.
A total solar eclipse passing over some of Earth's most densely populated regions on Wednesday, July 22, 2009, may become the most viewed eclipse ever.
It will be the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting at most 6 minutes, 58 seconds. It has sparked tourist interest in eastern China and India.
It will be visible from a narrow corridor through nothern Maldives, northern India, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, the northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean, including the Ryukyu Islands, Marshall Islands and Kiribati.
Totality will be visible in many large cities, including Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Dinajpur, Guwahati, Chengdu, Nanchong, Chongqing, Yichang, Jingzhou, Wuhan, Huanggang, Hefei, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo and Shanghai, as well as over the Three Gorges Dam. According to some experts, Taregana[6][7] in Bihar is the "best" place to view the event.
A partial eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including most of Southeast Asia (all of India and China) and north-eastern Oceania.