Yesterday morning’s hybrid solar eclipse was stunning. But depending on where you are in the world you may not have been able to see it at all, cloud cover may have messed with visibility, or you may have had a partial view. So for anyone who missed it, this is what the eclipse looked like from Kenya.
For most North American observers, the partial eclipse coincided with sunrise. But within a very narrow corridor that extends for 8,345 miles (13,430 kilometers) across the planet, the disks of the sun and the moon appeared to exactly coincide, providing an example of the most unusual type of eclipse: a “hybrid” or “annular-total eclipse.” Throughout a hybrid eclipse, however, the celestial sight transitions from annular to total.
This overview map of the Nov. 3, 2013 annular and total solar eclipse, a hybrid solar eclipse, shows the path of the event. Cartographer Michael Zeiler of Eclipse-Maps.com created this map. Credit: Michael Zeiler/Eclipse-Maps.com View full size image
During the 21st century approximately 4.9% of all central solar eclipses — those eclipses where the moon crosses directly in front of the disk of the sun — fall into the hybrid classification. However, as pointed out by the renowned Belgian eclipse calculator, Jean Meeus, the hybrid eclipse of Nov. 3 was a special case: here the eclipse started out as annular, then after only 15-seconds it transitioned to a total eclipse, and then it remained total up to the very end of the eclipse path. The last time this happened was on Nov. 20, 1854 and the next such case after 2013 will occur on Oct. 17, 2172.
The top image is made of three exposures, all taken by Ben Curtis at Lake Oloidien near Naivasha in Kenya. The image shows the movement of the solar eclipse from right to left. A near total blackout was visible from Kenya, though there was still a small sliver of the sun showing. The photo below was taken in Nairobi by Sayyid Azim. The eclipse was only visible in Kenya for about 15 seconds.
…And this timelapse of the eclipse was shot in Key West, Florida, USA:
From William Dail who shot the video: “Sunrise annular eclipse from Key West, Florida 6:35 a.m. E.S.T. Key West had a weather front arrive just before sunrise which brought a bunch of low level clouds with it. Thought I was not even going to see the eclipse! I got lucky the sun peaked below the clouds. So All I was able to get was the 4 minutes it took to rise and disappear into the clouds. Of course the skies decided to clear out 2 hours later! I had the camera on a tripod but it was windy enough to blow it around which caused the video to get shaky.”
You can watch the entire eclipse here as it happened (as recorded at Prescott Observatory). Using special solar equipment, Prescott Director Matt Francis was joined by solar researcher Dr. Lucie Green in Britain, who explained the various phenomena unfolding in real-time, and what they meant.
Filed under: The Sun
