The annular solar eclipse, the last one for the decade, began at around 8 am on Thursday morning. Several parts of the country, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi, are witnessing a solar eclipse.
As per the official release, the annular eclipse of the Sun is visible within a narrow corridor in the northern Hemisphere near to equator. The annular path passes through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, UAE, India, northern part of Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, and Borneo. The Moon’s penumbral shadow produces a partial eclipse, visible in the region covering Middle East, North Eastern Africa, Asia except North and Eastern Russia, North and Western Australia, Solomon Island.
A solar eclipse occurs on a new moon day when the Moon comes in between the Earth and the Sun and when all the three objects are aligned. An annular solar eclipse will occur when the angular diameter of the Moon falls short of that of the Sun so that it cannot cover up the latter completely. As a result a ring of the Sun’s disk remains visible around the Moon, it said.
Eclipsed Sun should not be viewed with the naked eye, even for a very short time. It will cause permanent damage of the eyes leading to blindness even when the moon covers most portion of the Sun. Safe technique to observe the solar eclipse is either by using proper filter like aluminized Mylar, black polymer, welding glass of shade number 14 or by making projection of Sun’s image on a white board by telescope, it added.
