Thursday, March 10, 2016

Total Eclipse of the Sun

As the astro buffs out there already know, there was a total solar eclipse on March 8-9 visible from certain geographical areas that were in the path of totality (parts of Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean). Sadly, this celestial phenomenon was not visible from Pakistan, but thanks to Slooh, I was able to watch it live from Palu, Indonesia and captured images of the eclipse in real time from their telescope.





The sun was gradually "eaten up" by the moon, until it was completely covered, and that was when you could see the "diamond ring effect" (fifth image from the end) before seeing the spectacle that is totality or total eclipse. The last image is from NASA's eclipse coverage in Micronesia.