Sky watchers in Southeast Asia were treated to a rare “ring of fire” solar eclipse on Thursday, which occur when the Moon is not close enough to the Earth to completely obscure the Sun.
The phenomenon – known as an annular eclipse – was visible along a path 118 kilometres wide, stretching from Saudi Arabia and Oman to India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
While these types of eclipses occur every year or two, they are only visible from a narrow band of Earth each time and it can be decades before the same pattern is repeated.
The ring effect lasted longest just east of the Indonesian island of Pulau Gin Besar, according to astronomy news website Space.com, but – weather permitting – it was also visible across Indonesia’s Sumatra and Sarawak, in Singapore and from just south of General Santos City in the Philippines.
Hundreds of amateur astronomers and photographers set up by Singapore’s harbour for what some described as a “once in a lifetime” event.
“The next one will happen in about 40 years I think,” said Jason Teng, 37, who took the day off work to photograph the eclipse, using a special solar filter on his telescope as there is no safe period to observe an annular solar eclipse.
Alexander Alin 45, a geophysicist from Germany, travels around the world following eclipses.
“It’s only two minutes, but it’s so intense that you talk about it with your friends, family for the next month,” Alin said.
In southern India, people gathered on the beaches in Tamil Nadu to watch the event.
The eclipse even affected cricket, with play delayed by two hours in a first-class match between Mumbai and Rajkot.
The eastern state of Orissa declared a public holiday, with all government offices, courts, schools and colleges closed.
But in New Delhi, cloud and pollution blocked the view and Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his disappointment, although only a partial eclipse would have been visible that far north.
“Like many Indians I was enthusiastic,” Modi said.
“Unfortunately, I could not see the Sun due to cloud cover but I did catch glimpses of the eclipse in Kozhikode and other parts on live stream.”
In Indonesia, hundreds of people gathered outside Jakarta Planetarium to watch the event using protective glasses supplied by the planetarium, hoping for clear skies at the time of maximum eclipse.
“I could see the eclipse this morning and now am very excited to see the peak though now it is cloudy,” said Chandra Ayu Dewi, 39, who arrived at 7am with her children.
Outside the narrow band where the “ring of fire” effect can be observed, sky watchers would see a partial solar eclipse.
The next solar eclipse to strike the region will occur on June 21, 2020. when an extremely short but dramatic “ring of fire” will be visible from a narrow track that crosses Ethiopia, South Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, India, China and Taiwan. Although it will last only 38 seconds at most, this one will be so near a total solar eclipse that there will be many astronomical phenomena to look for, including bubbling beads of light around the moon.
The best viewing locations will be Quriyat, Oman, north of Lhasa in Tibet, and the port city of Xiamen on China’s southeast coast. From Hong Kong there will be an 86 per cent partial solar eclipse.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
