How to watch this weekend’s dramatic “ring of fire” eclipse
A striking “ring of fire” solar eclipse will occur late Saturday night and into early Sunday morning.
But don’t get ready to rush outside in your pajamas. The event will be visible in parts of Africa, the Middle East, India, China and Australia, but not from anywhere in the United States.
That’s OK, say astronomers. You can still watch it live on your computer.
“It is quite spectacular,” said Andrew Fraknoi, chairman emeritus of astronomy at Foothill College in Los Altos. “If you want to see it without traveling to China or India or Africa, you can see it online. You get a free trip.”
Typically, a solar eclipse happens when the moon passes directly between the sun and the Earth, temporarily blocking out its light. Americans were captivated by a total solar eclipse that was visible across the United States in 2017.
But in a “ring of fire” solar eclipse, the moon is at a place in its orbit where it doesn’t entirely block out the sun. Instead, it covers most of it during the peak, leaving sunlight glowing around the edges, and the “ring of fire” effect.
“It’s like if you had a light on your desk, and you put it on the other side of the room and held up a quarter,” Fraknoi said. “You’d see just a little ring of light on all sides of the quarter.”
Astronomers call such eclipses “annular” eclipses — from the Latin word annulus, meaning ring-shaped.
The time of maximum eclipse, when the “ring of fire” image happens, will be at 11:40 p.m. PST Saturday night. It will end at 1:32 a.m. Sunday. Getting set up a few minutes early is recommended.
A partial eclipse starts at 8:45 p.m. PDT Saturday evening and ends at 2:34 a.m. Sunday morning.
To watch the eclipse live on Saturday night, go to Timeanddate.com
It also can be viewed on You Tube at https://youtu.be/du1JNrFD0M0
Saturday is also the beginning of summer, known as summer solstice. Although there are New Age and astrology advocates who have attempted to link that event with the eclipse, there is no scientific relevance or connection, Fraknoi said.
The Earth’s next total solar eclipse will occur on Dec. 14, 2020. But that will be visible primarily in Chile and Argentina, not in the United States.
Oct. 14, 2023 is next “ring of fire” eclipse visible from the United States. Then comes the big one, on April 8, 2024 — when there will be the next total eclipse visible in the United States.
Some type of eclipse occurs roughly every six months somewhere in the world. Fraknoi said such events are great opportunities to interest the general public, particularly children, in science.
“It’s amazing that we can predict eclipses to the second out 100 years or more,” he said. “Computers do the hard world of mechanical calculating. But we know when eclipses are coming. They are beautiful to look at. It makes you appreciate that the solar system works a little bit like a clock with gears. It’s predictable. It’s a nice lesson that there is in nature a kind of regularity that we can predict through science long in advance.”