A partial eclipse of the Sun will grace the skies of much of North America during the late afternoon and evening hours of Friday, April 8, 2005. The eclipse will be particularly dramatic in south Florida, where half of the Sun's disk will be blocked by the Moon. From Boynton Beach, Florida about 43% of the Sun's diameter will be covered, after 6 p.m. EDT.

With the help of the web design students at Boynton Beach HS, Erich Landstrom has designed a webpage for Friday's partial solar eclipse for teachers. The project is part of his work for National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.The site has lesson plans on space science, geography, math, and has resources in powerpoint, animations, and MIDI. The URL is:

http://www.palmbeach.k12.fl.us/boynt...e/aprilecl.htm

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For a very narrow strip stretching from just east of New Zealand (where the date is April 9) across the Pacific Ocean to Panama, Columbia, and ending in Venezuela at sunset April 8. Viewers will see a rare hybrid solar eclipse, annular in some places on earth and total in others. Only 5% of all solar eclipses are hybrid. In this strip, the Moon's disk will lie totally in front of the Sun, but because the Moon will be near the far part of its elliptical orbit around Earth, its disk isn't quite big enough to block the entire disk of the Sun. As a result, viewers initially see an eclipse appearing as a dazzling ring (or "annulus") of light around the silhouetted Moon.

Solar eclipses happen when the new Moon* passes in front of the Sun. They don't take place every month because of the tilt of the Moon's orbit. The Moon's orbit around the earth is slightly elliptical, as is the earth's orbit around the Sun. Therefore, the Moon and the Sun do not always appear to be precisely the same size in the sky. The Moon's diameter ranges from 29.3 to 33.5 arcminutes while the Sun's diameter may be anywhere between 31.5 to 32.5 arcminutes. About once a year (on average) when the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun, and the Moon is the same size or larger than the Sun, we have a total eclipse somewhere on Earth.

However, this annular eclipse becomes a total solar eclipse as the Earth rotates. It begins annular where the locations crossed are further from the Moon's umbral shadow. But spinning the curvature of the Earth's surface brings some geographic locations into the umbra (whereas the tail portions were more distant). As the Earth rotates, the middle of the track length is lifted out of the antumbral and into the umbral shadow. In that narrow path of totality, 15 miles wide in the Pacific, just south of the equator, the Moon's fast moving shadow** will turn day into night for 42 seconds. The temperature will drop, birds will stop singing, and overhead, the Sun's glorious corona will stretch across the sky.

Within the U.S., a minor partial solar eclipse can be seen on Friday afternoon April 8 as far north as southeasternmost California (just before 3 p.m. PDT), Arizona, northwest New Mexico, southeast Colorado, Kansas, northern Missouri, and southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. From the southern tip of Texas, the Moon will cover as much as 40 percent of the Sun’s diameter, shortly after 5 p.m. CDT. From the southern tip of Florida, about 50 percent of the Sun’s diameter will be covered, after 6 p.m. EDT. Because the eclipse will occur late in the day, make sure you have an unobstructed view to the west, where the Sun will be located.

For viewers in the southern and mid-Atlantic states, the Sun will be setting while the eclipse is still in progress, which offers photographers a splendid opportunity to take spectacular pictures. Maximum eclipse (when the highest percentage of the Sun's diameter is blocked by the Moon) occurs about one hour after the eclipse starts, and the eclipse ends roughly an hour after maximum. Here are times of deepest solar eclipse for selected cities arranged by time zone, and the magnitude, or fraction of the solar diameter covered by the Moon. Please visit Fred Espenak's website listed near the bottom of this webpage http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...5/PSE2005.html, for the exact beginning, maximum, and end eclipse times for your area.

MST: Phoenix AZ 2:57 p.m. (0.04).
MDT: El Paso TX 4:02 p.m. (0.15).
CDT: Houston TX 5:11 p.m. (0.30);
Oklahoma City OK 5:11 p.m. (0.11);
Little Rock AR 5:14 p.m. (0.15);
New Orleans LA 5:15 p.m. (0.31);
Memphis TN 5:15 p.m. (0.15);
St. Louis MO 5:15 p.m. (0.04);
Birmingham AL 5:17 p.m. (0.21).
EDT: Louisville KY 6:17 p.m. (0.07);
Charleston WV 6:18 p.m. (0.07);
Atlanta GA 6:18 p.m. (0.21);
Tallahassee FL 6:19 p.m. (0.32);
Washington DC 6:19 p.m. (0.05);
Philadelphia PA 6:19 p.m. (0.02);
West Palm Beach, FL 6:21 p.m. (0.43);
Miami, FL 6:20 p.m. (0.47);
Raleigh NC 6:20 p.m. (0.15);
Richmond VA 6:20 p.m. (0.10).

The next North American total solar eclipse will happen on August 21, 2017. Totality will last 2 minutes and 40 seconds


*New Moon: when the Sun and the Moon are nearly aligned in the sky and the Earth-facing side of the Moon does not appear to be illuminated.
**During a total eclipse, the Moon's shadow sweeps across the earth at speeds exceeding 1000 mph.

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Darn! I'm in northern Ohio.

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Yikes! The NASA Channel just showed some SOHO images speeded up, animated. On Direct TV channel 376.

Here’s the NASA channel via the Internet on Real Player. Looks like this is running about 40 seconds behind the TV version. They’re not showing the SOHO images now. Looks like a group of short miscellaneous reports.

http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram

Wow, now they’re showing now how the new 38-foot wide James Webb Space Telescope is going to work, how it’s going to unfold in space after arriving in orbit.

Yikes! The SOHO images again, speeded up and animated. The sun pulses! The outgoing bursts go out in pulses with a little time in between them, about 3 to 8 pulses in a row. I don’t know how fast these pictures are speeded up. I’ve never seen this before.

unfortunately i started another thread before i saw this one.

im looking forward to this event. where i am i get to see the end of it just as the sun rises in east. i hope it wont be cloudy.

---edited to add extra bit from another thread (now deleted)----
This saturday (april 9) where i live the sun should rise with its face obscured.

Its a partial annular eclipse, and will end at 0730 with the sun still only 10 degrees above the horizon.

im quite excited as i have never seen any type of eclipse before, and this will be good enough for me.

what do u think is the best way to view it? luckily i can easily get an unobstructed view to the horizon where i live. looking out across the ocean either east or west isnt much of a trek.

Iti, if you delete your post in the other thread before anyone has replied, the thread will disappear. In a case like this, this is allowed.

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Yay, I get a whole .05%

The last eclipse I saw (including lunars) was somewhere around 1992-1993, a partial.

It gets reliably cloudy during any event. I even missed the venus transit due to clouds. :-?

That link failed for me..

Try this... eclipse chart of nasa
(There is a hi res mode you can click in the caption of the chart)

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30% for me. Pfft, hardly worth risking a sunburn, besides I'll be sleeping.

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10% over Albuquerque at about 4 PM, with some level of eclipsing going on for most of an hour. I'll be watching (with eye protection of course).

Hmm.. maybe it's time to invest in a good solar filter.

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http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats...033/prj:6/.png

I'm just north of the 0% line, and have no way of getting further south.

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Drat. I'm just south of that big dot that says "San Francisco".
That would put me on the -20% line.

NZ Herald article: Look out for an odd eclipse

Good to see they had the following included in the article:

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Looks like the standard disclaimer you see in every eclipse story, even lunar eclipse stories

Looks to be about 5% for me...I was gonna try and take some photos of it, but that's not worth the work.

Howsomever, my trusty dusty ol' 10x50's with filters should give me a decent view...that high hill and picnic table outside FarSouth Residence Hall oughtta be just right...

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Darn, just misses Pasadena. I don't want to drive to Mexico. For once,
I envy Floridians.

That's 250% more than I get Nonetheless, if the clouds behave, I'm gonna get out my handmade solar filter that I made for the Venus transit. It worked great. If I'm lazy, I might just use the solar glasses.

I just got my 30% right on time...looked exactly like the NASA chart picture...like a Pacman.

My sunglasses aren't dark enough, so I bounced it off of a cassette with a dark background--no kidding--and could see it's shape just fine. About 10 minutes later (5:15) I was able to look directly at it for a couple of seconds (I know, I know, I shouldn't do that. :roll: ) It was very, very bright before then and after, and it's hot as well, so by 5:20 I had enough. I'm still wearing my sunglasses inside!

Edit typo and sentence

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Clouds eclipsed the eclipse here.

Here's what it looked like a few minutes ago here in N MS. Equipment was a old-fashioned pinhole setup (captured with a not so old-fashioned digital camera ).



Clouds have now moved in, with an occasional clear spot. Weather reminds me of the conditions in Maine for the total solar eclipse back on July 20, 1963.

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Yay! After being incredibly cloudy all day, it cleared up enough to see pretty much all of the 1% eclipse here in Baltimore, MD! I saw it through a welder's mask, a C8 and a 8" refractor. Just a teeny-tiny little nubbin missing!

Hey, 1% is better than nothing. One of our posters in Dallas said he didn't see anything and he should have seen 20%, but he may have not used something as useful as a dark cassette or a welding mask, lol.

I'm sorry Wolverine that clouds were up in Austin. I thought that was going to happen here, because it was looking pretty overcast, but you know, I've had enough bad luck with the sky lately, so my good pal the sun, came through for me. Good picture Maksutov. Anybody in Houston area take a picture? I was at work in my parking lot, not that I have anything to take a picture with.

Now, I would liked to have been snorkeling in Belize and popped out of the water to see it there....Oct 3 in Madrid would be fun.

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The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity. We must learn by laughter as well as by tears and terror. ~ R. W. Emerson

Can't win 'em all. A gallery's been started at Spaceweather, so that'll suffice as a consolation prize.

You're just full of useful sites, huh?

This is Daytona Beach, which is pretty much the same latitude as Houston. My parents would have seen more in Vero Beach--40%. The second shot here is what it looked like to me:


Now this Venezuela shot is gorgeous!

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Heh, heh, the subject of our lovely star has me digging in my old, old notebooks. I can't resist sharing this as it exalts the sun. I was forced to go to a Catholic High School and my English teacher was a priest; he assigned us the task to write something very short on an object, any object. I had written this long before, but thought the religious terminology would be OK with him. Yep, it's corny, but...

He gave me a B+, he said, because I wrote about an object in a different way than the other students, but that I was being "paganistic." #-o

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Well, it was clear yesterday, so I would have seen it if it were visible here. #-o

Oh well, I'll catch the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. That is, if it isn't cloudy that day.

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drat!
cloudy!