'Ring of fire' eclipse to burn Australia Sol and Luna's eternal cosmic dance reaches one of its regular peaks tomorrow, when an annular eclipse will be visible from Australia, Papua New Guinea, and several small Pacific nations. Annular eclipses are known as “ring of fire” eclipses, because while the sun and moon line up Luna appears smaller than the sun, leaving a …
22:00 GMT ... multiply by 9, divide by 5 ... take away the number I first thought of ... I make that about half-past sparrow-fart here (in the ACT).
That means I can fire up the internet to view the eclipse in the morning and nip off to Tidbinbilla in the afternoon to see the new dish. Ah, don't you love Fridays!
22:00 GMT = 8am EST which hardly counts as sparrow-fart (unless you are a teenager and/or student).
Not worth seeing here in ACT though, partials are boring. Even annulars are annoying because you can't look at them directly. The only ones worth bothering with are total eclipses, having seen the 2002 one in Lyndhurst (South Australia) I can confirm that totals are truly amazing!
I would disagree; even a partial eclipse is not boring.
Take your hands, crossing the fingers of each hand to make a 4x4 grid. Spread them just a bit, to make a bunch of almost pinholes. Hold over a flat white surface. Watch what would normally be round spots become little crescents - you've just made a bunch of pinhole viewers. Go find a tree that is making a bunch of pin-holes between the leaves. Make a pinhole viewer from a gum wrapper. Let your inner child-scientist loose for a change!
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