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January 26th, 2009 Annular 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!

Check That Swift Set of Data!
Check that set of data. Free! A useful overview of the January 26th, 2009 annular solar eclipse, in a format easy to take on the field! click on the thumbnail!

This first solar eclipse for 2009 is mostly unfolding in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, eventually reaching land in Indonesia by its end only, and it's an annular one. An annular eclipse occurs when the occulting disk of the Moon, compared to the Sun, is larger, leaving a whole ring of dazzling Sun around the dark disk of the Moon. During such an annular eclipse, the 'umbra', the shadow yielded trough the eclipse is reaching the Earth nowhere, as it's, at the opposite, the 'antumbra' which does, a lesser kind of shadow. for more about the solar eclipses, theoretically, see our tutorial "Sun Eclipses"

The January 26th, 2009 annular solar eclipse path is running from the sea, southwest of South Africa, up to Indonesia, through the whole of the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. The greatest of the eclipse is occurring over a point of the ocean only, at 07:58:39 UT. It's only after by 09:30 UT that the eclipse will be observable like annular from Indonesia and Borneo, albeit there, the time zones will make that it will already be late in the afternoon. Like any eclipse, further, the eclipse will yield either part of the path of the annular, regions where the eclipse will be seen like a partial solar eclipse. The wont of lands there however will make that such regions will be found in southern Africa, southeast Asia, and Australia only. The southernmost part of southern Africa will have about a 50 percent occulted Sun either side of 06:30 UT as Indochina and southeast Asia will have this show few before, or at sunset. And the same, barely earlier for the southwestern and western parts of Australia. In any case, the nearer the line of the annular eclipse, the larger the Sun will be indented

The eclipse's main data are the following (data as of the beginning of July 2009). The Moon's apparent diameter will be of 29' 43.2", compared to the Sun's 32' 29.2". for more about how to observe a solar eclipse, see our tutorial "Observing a Sun Eclipse ":
- greatest eclipse: 07:58:39.0 UT
- eclipse magnitude (fraction of the Sun's diameter obscured by the Moon at greatest eclipse): 0.9282
- local circumstances at greatest eclipse (lat: 34° 04.2'S, long: 070° 14.0'E, elev of Sun: 73.4°; duration at greatest: 7m 53.7s)
- U1 to U4 (moments of first-last external-internal tangency of the antumbra with Earth's limb; practically these are the moments of the eclipse for the places where the eclipse is annular); in UT: U1 at 06:02:38.8, U2 at 06:08:58.3, U3 at 09:48:28.9, U4 at 09:54:44.1
- 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 04:56:37.6, P2 at 07:21:05.2, P3 at 08:36:31.8, P4 at 11:00:40.9

see a map for the January 26th, 2009 annular solar eclipse (53 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 state that Indonesians could enjoy the sight of the annular eclipse. A tiny South Pacific island group known as the Cocos, further, was just the other place, with Borneo and Indonesia, where the eclipse could be seen annular!