The Ministry of Earth Sciences had announced that an annular eclipse of sun will occur on Thursday, December 26, 2019.
It said that annular phase will be visible in the morning after sunrise from some places within a narrow corridor of southern part of the country (parts of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu) and it will be seen as partial solar eclipse from the rest part of the country.
TIMINGS-
Considering the Earth as a whole the partial phase of the eclipse will begin at 8 am. The annular phase will begin at 9: 06 am and end at 12:29 pm. The partial phase will end at 1:36 pm.
LOCATIONS-
A partial eclipse of sun will be visible from Bhubaneswar from 8:20 am to 11:28, the Met Centre at Bhubaneswar said in an advisory on Wednesday.
The fullest eclipse would occur at 9:46 am with maximum obscuration of 54.7%.
The ministry said that the narrow corridor of annular phase of the eclipse will pass through the southern part of the country through places like Cannanore, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Madurai, Mangalore, Ooty and Tiruchirappalli.
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In India, the obscuration of Sun by the Moon at the time of the greatest phase of the annular eclipse will be nearly 93%. As one moves towards the north and south of the country from the annular path, the duration of the partial eclipse decreases.
Obscuration of the Sun by the Moon at the time of greatest phase of partial eclipse will be around 90% in Bangalore, 85% in Chennai, 79% in Mumbai, 70% in Port Blair, 45% in Kolkata, 45% in Delhi, 42% in Patna, 35% in Silchar and 33% in Guwahati.
WARNING-
The ministry said that eclipsed sun should not be viewed with the naked eye, even for a very short time and cautioned that it will cause permanent damage of the eyes leading to blindness even when the moon covers most portion of the Sun.
Safe technique to observe the solar eclipse is either by using a proper filter like aluminized mylar, black polymer, welding glass of shade number 14 or by making a projection of Sun’s image on a white board by telescope, it said.
A solar eclipse occurs when the moon comes in between the earth and the sun and when all the three bodies are aligned.
An annular eclipse occurs when the moon covers the sun’s centre, leaving the sun’s outer edges visible to form a ‘ring of fire’ or annulus around the moon.