NEW DELHI: A partial solar eclipse will be seen in India on Friday while the north-eastern parts of the country will see quite a large fraction of the disc of the Sun, eclipsed by the Moon.
“The partial eclipse will be seen in the north-eastern region, starting from about 4 PM,” director of Nehru Planetarium, Rathnasree, said.
The biggest and the last phase of the eclipse will be visible from most parts of the country, except Nagaland and Mizoram, where the eclipse ends after sunset, she said.
The maximum obscuration of the sun will occur at Sibsagar in Assam.
A total eclipse will be visible in Canada extending across northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia and China.
The next solar eclipse - a partial one - will occur on January 26, 2009, but the phenomenon will be marginally visible from eastern and southern India.
The eclipse can be viewed from all over the country. In Delhi, the eclipse will start at 4:03 pm and end at 5:56 pm. It will be maximum at 5:02 pm.
In Mumbai, it will from 4:27 pm to 6:03 pm, while in Chennai it will be visible from 4:40 pm to 6:07 pm and in Kolkata it will be seen between 4:18 pm and 6:02 pm where it will be relatively free from cloud cover.
The southern parts of India will see between 20-40 per cent of the diameter of the sun, while the northern parts of the country will see between 40-70 per cent of the diameter of the sun, at maximum of the eclipse. The eastern parts of the country will have the advantage that being closest to sunset, some of the eclipse would still remain so that, a possibility of safely imaging the eclipse against their local geography is feasible, the director said.
Experts have repeatedly warned that viewing the eclipse with naked eyes would be very dangerous. What is still more dangerous is viewing the Sun through a telescope or a pair of binoculars without a proper filter as it could destroy the eyesight, she said.
The safest way of viewing a partial solar eclipse is through the method of projection. If you do not have access to a telescope or a pair of binoculars with which you can make this set-up for projection, an easy method will be to use a kitchen “channi” that has very
small perforations.
