{"id":1307,"date":"2020-07-13T21:28:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T01:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/iau-eclipses\/?page_id=1307"},"modified":"2020-07-14T19:21:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T23:21:12","slug":"eclipse-2020","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/iau-eclipses\/eclipse-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Eclipse 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

June’s Annular Solar Eclipse<\/b><\/p>\n

Jay Pasachoff<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

[updated July 3, 2020]<\/span><\/p>\n

2020 boasts of two solar eclipses, an annular eclipse on June 21 and a total solar eclipse forthcoming in South America on December 14.\u00a0 Travel restrictions prevented Americans, Canadians, and many others from Earth’s western hemisphere from the annularity path that stretched from Africa through the Middle East to Pakistan, India, and Tibet.\u00a0 But people on the spot in those countries provided wonderful images to those of us who monitored web images and live streams in the middle of the night, while it was daylight in the eclipse path.<\/span><\/p>\n

On June 21, the Moon was relatively far from Earth in its elliptical orbit, so its angular size was relatively small.\u00a0 It therefore fit within the solar disk even when we were in syzygy, with Earth-Moon-Sun in a straight line.\u00a0 We have the advantages now not only of instant communication halfway around the world but also of online eclipse-path mapping by Xavier Jubier of France (http:\/\/xjubier.free.fr\/ase2020map), and Fred Espenak’s EclipseWise.com (taking over from his pre-retirement site at NASA: <\/span>https:\/\/eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov\/SEgoogle\/SEgoogle2001\/SE2020Jun21Agoogle.html<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

with zooming and clicking providing eclipse-contact data at any location; high-quality eclipse mapping by cartographer Michael Zeiler of New Mexico; and cloudiness statistics gleaned over decades and discussed by Jay Anderson of Canada (with whom our joint <\/span>Peterson Field Guide to Weather<\/span><\/i> is being published in fall 2020).<\/span><\/p>\n

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All these sites are linked to my website for the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Solar Eclipses, which I chair, at http:\/\/eclipses.info.\u00a0 Observations are posted at my Williams College Eclipse Expeditions website for the 75 or so solar eclipses I have worked with.<\/span><\/p>\n

An “annulus” is a “ring,” of course, so these eclipses have long been called “ring eclipses,” since a ring of everyday sunlight remains visible at maximum coverage, with between some tenths through some few percent of the solar diameter remaining visible.\u00a0 So it could be called a “ring-of-photosphere” or a “ring-of-sunlight” eclipse.\u00a0 The recent popularization of the term “ring-of-fire” eclipse, which apparently first appeared in print in 1992, is most unfortunate terminology, since the general public, to which the term caters, won’t on the whole understand that there is no chemical fire on the Sun, but rather a clean thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen gas safely 93 million miles away, to which we owe the light and warmth we receive from the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the June 21 annular eclipse crossed its African beginnings, from which I have not seen any observations, it reached the Middle East.\u00a0 A few days in advance, I had given a Zoom lecture sponsored by an Iranian public outreach organization.\u00a0 It was organized by Saheed Jafari, Director of International and Science Communication, Saros Science Popularization Team, Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8ts_IAsrBIY&feature=youtu.be<\/span><\/p>\n

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The path of annularity did not quite reach Saudi Arabia, but Albouazza Elhamdi of King Saud University captured a good sequence of partial phases in the early morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

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At about the same time, annularity passed through Oman. Alaa Ibrahim and Zach Ioannou <\/span>of the Astronomy Group of the Department of Physics in the College of Science in Sultan Qaboos University provided a series of images and a live stream to delight those watching overnight.\u00a0 They also tracked the temperature and humidity throughout the eclipse and reported that it was 45\u00b0C before the eclipse (leading to occasional overheating of the apparatus) but that the temperature went down all the way to 32\u00b0C, by 13\u00b0C or by about 23\u00b0F (from 113\u00b0F to 90\u00b0F) as the Sun was hidden by the Moon.\u00a0 From nearby Izki, Oman, for their H-alpha imaging, they used a Daystar 60 mm telescope with a Nikon D750 digital camera.\u00a0 Some prominences can be found upon stacking a large number of images, 210, as seen with a Lunt 80mm, and a ZWO ASI 1600mm Pro camera.<\/span><\/p>\n

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