![]() ![]() Make sure your horizon is clear in that direction. Look low in the east before dawn to watch Venus and Jupiter draw closer and closer together. but that's a good thing, because it means you can sneak in a little stargazing before dinnertime. and Canada) means that most of us are still heading home from work as evening’s twilight sets in. The return to standard time (November 5th in the U.S. Pasachoff reports that his 10-person team, funded by the National Geographic Society, obtained thousands of images and spectra.As you'll hear in this month's astronomy podcast, Venus and Jupiter are putting on quite a show low in the east before dawn. After a brief rainstorm, the sky cleared completely by the time of totality. Viewing from Port Gentil, near the centerline, Terry Cuttle was part of a small group of eclipse-chasers who saw totality perfectly for the first 25 seconds and then another 45 seconds though a very thin cloud.įarther inland, Jay Pasachoff led a Williams College expedition that watched from near La Lope National Park in central Gabon. The Moon’s umbra raced eastward and reached the African coast at 13:51 Universal Time. Click on the image for a larger version.Ī large group aboard the Corinthian, positioned at 5.7° N, 16.6° W, fared better, witnessing 90 seconds of totality in clear skies. Alson Wong captured this view from Pokwero Village, Uganda. November 2013's total eclipse offered observers positioned near the end of the path a chance to view the Sun's crimson-hued chromosphere and prominences around most of the silhouetted disk. “Fortunately, we got away from the really opaque high stuff,” reports Michael Gill, “and we were able to just see a watery-looking Sun with inner corona. Passengers aboard the yacht SeaDream, positioned at 14.1° N, 31.8° W, dodged clouds to get mostly into the clear. No one saw that, but a few ships were in the area. The longest duration, 99 seconds, would have been seen from a spot in the Atlantic southwest of Liberia. “Our possible choices for the seconds of totality seen are 1, 0, and less than 0.” “We agree this one is still too close to call,” comments participant Liz O’Mara. Timing was critical, given the ultra-narrow shadow, but the team reports qualified success. Owing to Earth’s curvature, this intriguing event began as a barely annular eclipse in the western Atlantic Ocean that quickly transitioned to full totality before sweeping across central Africa.Īt the western end, a group of intrepid observers chased the Moon’s shadow aboard a Falcon 900B aircraft that took off from Bermuda. Such devotion was again evident during November 3rd’s eclipse, during which the Moon’s shadow traced out a ribbon of darkness some 8,500 miles (13,600 km) long but only 36 miles (58 km) across at its widest. Little wonder, then, that people from around the world do whatever it takes to stand in the Moon’s shadow. Sky & Telescope illustration / Fred EspenakĪ total solar eclipse never fails to deliver the kind of otherworldly experience that is both beautiful in its delicacy and ominous in its abruptness. For your location, interpolate between the red lines to estimate the Universal Time of maximum eclipse, and between the blue lines for the fraction of the Sun's diameter that will be covered then. The eclipse is partial over a much wider region, as mapped by the grid. The solar eclipse on November 3, 2013, begins annular (at the far-left end of the central green line) but quickly becomes total as the Moon's umbra crosses the Atlantic Ocean, then central Africa. ![]()
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