The Annular Solar Eclipse
on 2010 January 15th

2010 ජනවාරි, වළයාකාර සූර්යග්‍රහණය

Are you ready to observe a rare and spectacular event one can see only once in one's life time?
Retrain from looking directly at the sun any moment when the eclipse is taking please. .

      This annular eclipse can be seen Friday the 15th January 2010 covering a path of 333 km and visible to Africa, South Asia and Southern East Asia for 11 minutes and 08 seconds.

      A solar eclipse is a phenomenon in which the sun is obscured by the moon has to come between the sun and the earth. During new moon this takes place but as you know that every new moon cannot make a solar eclipse. This will be dealt late. The illustration shows the position of the sun, the moon and earth during an annular eclipse; the dark shadow of the moon is called "Umbra" and the lesser dark shadow that make a partial eclipse is call "Penumbra" when the shadow of a annular eclipse shadow is "Ant umbra".
Anyone who lives under penumbra or Umbra or Ant umbra can see the solar eclipse. Considering the area of the earth you can understand that the eclipse can be seen in a small area. It is obvious that a solar eclipse is special because of this reason.

There are four kinds of solar eclipses in accordance with the position of the sun the moon and the earth.

They are,
Total Solar Eclipse
Annular Solar Eclipses
Partial Solar Eclipses
Hybrid Eclipse

The Annular Solar Eclipse on 2010 January 15th

The Path of Eclipse

      That will be reaching to the maximum at 13.24 from local time (07.54UT) to Jaffna (Sri Lanka). This eclipse is very significant to Sri Lanka because this is an extensive eclipse taken place after the memorable total solar eclipse in January 20th 1955 and an annular eclipse appeared 109 years ago in 1901. Since all the eclipses seen in Sri Lanka were partial solar eclipses.

      This present eclipse can be seen at Jaffna and northern parts of Sri Lanka. Other parts of Sri Lanka the full scenario will not be seen. The northern parts of a line drown between Chilaw and Trinkomale this can be seen as an annular eclipse. Although the moon obscures the sun almost completely (as the illustration above) the sun can be observed as a circle around the moon's shadow. This is an ideal position of planets for annular eclipse. The difference between an annular and a total solar eclipse depend on the difference of distances between the sun and the moon and the moon and the earth.

Click here to know about Path of Eclipse through Sri Lanka

These are two pictures showing you the sequence of a annular solar eclipse and a shadow taken from a pinhole camera.