Sonnenfinsternis ....Lunar Eclipse on 15 January

 

Und heute gibt es auch schon die erste Mondfinsternis des Jahres, die auch in unseren Breiten sichtbar sein wird , allerdings nur zu 35%. Wir sind sehr gespannt auf Fotos aus Sri Lanka, denn dort wie auch auf den Malediven wird die Sonnenfinsternis 11 Minuten zu sehen sein, wenn das Wetter mitspielt...Wir wünschen hiermit allen Eclipse-Huntern viel Erfolg!!! 

Today there will be a solar eclipse, which will be the first one of 2010. More precisely it will be an annular eclipse with an estimated magnitude of 0.9190.

An annular solar eclipse is different from a total solar eclipse in the way that the apparent diameter of the moon seems smaller than the sun’s diameter. This is due to the moon being further away from earth. Therefore the eclipse will make the sun looks like an annulus (e.i ring).

 

The eclipse will be visible across certain part of Central Africa, Maldives, South India, Sri Lanka, Burma and parts of China. Check the animation above for more details. The eclipse will also be visible as a partial eclipse in other nearby regions indicated by the shadow above.

The eclipse will start in Uganda (Africa) and pass through the Indian Ocean to finally move through south India to China. The best spot to view the eclipse will be at Maldives where the duration of the eclipse is expected to last about 11 minutes.

The total eclipse will begin at about 5:13 GMT and ends at 8:59 GMT – The greatest eclipse view is expected at 7:07 GMT. For the sidenote, Mauritius is at GMT+4, so just add 4 hours to the time above to get the time here. Mauritians will have an eclipse visibility of 35%.

We are in touch with some eclipse hunters in Sri Lanka, friend Desh has promised to send some photos in as there the eclipse has also a duration of about 11 minutes. So good luck to Desh and all the other eclipse hunters of today!!!

Photo credits: Wikipedia and the Eclipse Site set up by the friends in Sri Lanka, the photo is from 2009.

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