2020 Annular Eclipse
Rafay Kazmi, a student at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, observed a partial eclipse from his home in Islamabad, Pakistan. Here, he and his sister are seen viewing the eclipse through special solar filters, one of thousands left over from the 2017 Great American Eclipse and available through Astronomers Without Borders.
Harindra Baraiya (Wildlife Institute of India/Mango Astronomy Club); image forwarded by Stephen Inbanathan (American College in Madurai)
The Mango Education Group experienced annularity during clear weather from Dehradun, which is the most populous city in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. That fortunate weather allowed them to capture this crisp shot of the thin circle created by the Sun’s disk stretching out just beyond the Moon’s silhouette.
The path of annularity also grazed Saudi Arabia, resulting in a partial eclipse for many. Abouazza Elhamdi of the Astronomy and Physics Department of King Saud University captured this sequence of partial phases in the early morning from Riyadh. I am working with Abouazza, Marcos Peñaloza-Murillo of Venezuela, and Michael Roman of England to analyze how eclipse darkening impacts the local temperature and humidity in desert climates.
Clouds only served to add mystique to this view of the eclipse from the city of Sirsa in the northern Indian state of Haryana, taken by Neelam and Ajay Talwar.
The Talwar team also captured this series of images tracking the progress of the annular eclipse over Sirsa. Even through the clouds, one can identify Baily’s beads, the solar chromosphere, and, perhaps, even the solar corona.
JAXA/Hinode (Thanks to Alphonse Sterling of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Kathy Reeves and Lucas Guliano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
The X-ray telescope on the Japanese Hinode spacecraft captured this series of shots, which have been rescaled and colored, showing the Moon blocking the Sun’s disk during the June eclipse. Astronomer Taro Sakao of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) took advantage of Hinode’s vantage point to observe how plasma moves within the high-speed solar wind stream, using the lunar silhouette for calibration of stray light.
Near the end of the path of annularity in Guam, the eclipse was visible with 97 percent coverage, as seen in this eerie shot. The path of annularity continued about 50 miles (80 km) out to sea — briefly tempting me to fly to the U.S. territory for a quarantined glimpse from a boat.
Due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was unable to venture to Europe. This image, however, came from Thessoliniki, Greece. It was captured by Aris Voulgaris, with whom I closely work on total solar eclipses.
A camera mounted to the outside of the International Space Station captured this shot of the Moon’s shadow racing across Earth (near the border of Kazakhstan and China) during the June 21 annular eclipse. In the foreground, a Japanese cargo spacecraft is visible.
The passage of the Moon’s shadow across Earth’s surface was also tracked by the European Meteosat-8 and the Japanese Himawari-8 spacecraft. Here we see a Meteosat view of Moon’s shadow over northeast Africa, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Peninsula. The next annular solar eclipse will occur June 10, 2021.
