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July 22nd, 2009 Total Solar Eclipse

CAUTION! OBSERVING A SUN ECLIPSE IS DANGEROUS AND MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE EYE DAMAGE, UP TO BLINDNESS, ANNULAR AND PARTIAL ECLIPSES INCLUDED! Observing a Sun eclipse necessitates DEDICATED SAFE TECHNIQUES!

This second, and last, solar eclipse in 2009, is a total solar eclipse, meaning that it will yield the famed sight of the totally eclipse Sun, with the rays of the corona gleaming away, at greatest. The eclipse mostly will begin over land, in India and China and keep walking East in the Western Pacific Ocean. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Sun is completely occulted by the disk of the Moon, as, like any such central eclipse, this one is yielding two zones, either side of the centrality path, where the eclipse is seen like partial, with the disk of the Sun partially indented only. for more about the solar eclipses, theoretically, see our tutorial "Sun Eclipses"

Like any total solar eclipse, this one is running East. The eclipse is beginning about by sunrise over India and then running East across central China. After that, the eclipse is unfolding over water only, albeit not that far of southern Japan. The greatest of the eclipse is reached over the Western Pacific, by 02:35:21 UT. The total eclipse has still there a long way to go until it ends, by 04:19:27 UT, in the central Pacific. As the July 22nd, 2009 total solar eclipse is a textbook one, it's generating, each side of the path of centrality, two regions where the eclipse is seen like partial, with that other famed view of the solar disk indented, variously, by the one of the Moon. The nearest the line of centrality, the larger the Sun is indented. The regions where the show is of most interest are northern China, Korea, Japan, Indochina, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands. A fine and rare show!

The eclipse's main data are the following (data as of the beginning of July 2009). The Moon's apparent diameter will be of 33' 25.4", compared to the Sun's 31' 29.0". for more about how to observe a solar eclipse, see our tutorial "Observing a Sun Eclipse ":
- greatest eclipse: 02:35:21.1 UT
- eclipse magnitude (fraction of the Sun's diameter obscured by the Moon at greatest eclipse): 1.0799
- local circumstances at greatest eclipse (lat: 24° 12.6'N, long: 144° 06.4'E, elev of Sun: 85.9°; duration at greatest: 6m 38.8s)
- U1 to U4 (moments of first-last external-internal tangency of the umbra with Earth's limb; practically these are the moments of the eclipse for the places where the eclipse is total); in UT: U1 at 00:51:16.9, U2 at 00:54:31.0, U3 at 04:16:13.1, U4 at 04:19:26.5
- P1 to P4 (moments of first-last external-internal tangency of the penumbra with Earth's limb; practically these are the moments of the eclipse for the places where the eclipse is partial), in UT: P1 at 23:58:18.7, P2 at 01:47:41.9, P3 at 03:23:03.3, P4 at 05:12:25.1

see a map for the July 22nd, 2009 annular solar eclipse (49 ko). map courtesy Fred Espenak - NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, site NASA Eclipse Web Site

. for more about this eclipse and for more about solar and lunar eclipses generally, see Fred Espenak's NASA Eclipse Web Site

Observation Reports: reports are stating that millions gathered to watch the eclipse in Asia, as the regions concerned -India and China- are some of superstitions and fables about solar eclipses. In some parts of Asia the eclipse lasted as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds, the longest eclipse since 1991 and until in next century, by 2132. Clouds began to obscure the sky in India by the eclipse's beginning, as they parted however in several cities later

A view of the July 22nd, 2009 total solar eclipse by the Japanese solar satellite Hinode. picture courtesy NASA/JAXA