Astronomy

The longest total solar eclipse during the 21st century, not to be surpassed until June 2132 has took place on 22 July 2009. It lasted a maximum of 6 minutes and 39 seconds off the coast of Southeast Asia,causing tourist interest in eastern China, Japan, India and Nepal. This was the second in the series of three eclipses in a one-month period, with two minor penumbral lunar eclipses, first on July 7 and last on August 6.

A partial eclipse was seen within the broad path of the Moon’s penumbra, including most of Southeast Asia (all of India and China) and north-eastern Oceania.

The total eclipse was visible from a narrow corridor through northern Maldives, northern India, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, northern Philippines, the northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean, including the Ryukyu Islands, Marshall Islands and Kiribati.

Totality was visible in many large cities, including Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Gaya, Dinajpur, Siliguri, Guwahati, Tawang in India and Chengdu, Nanchong, Chongqing, Yichang, Jingzhou, Wuhan, Huanggang, Hefei, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo, Shanghai, as well as over the Three Gorges Dam in China. According to NASA, the Japanese island Kitaio Jima was predicted to have the best viewing conditions featuring both longer viewing time (being the closest point of land to the point of greatest eclipse) and lower cloud cover statistics than all of continental Asia.

Picture: Total eclipse as seen on Varanasi, India [credit: wikipedia]

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