Although viewers may have to go a little out of their way to see it, the total solar eclipse on July 11 promises fascinating and exotic sights.
A one-of-a-kind light show will appear in the skies above a wide swath of the South Pacific and southern Argentina and Chile on Sunday, July 11, when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth to produce a rare total solar eclipse. Despite being millions of miles apart, when the Sun and Moon perfectly cross paths in the sky, the Moon (being closer) blocks the Sun's light and casts its shadow over a small area of Earth's surface.
The July 11 eclipse begins at sunrise about 435 miles (700 kilometers) southeast of the South Pacific island of Tonga, with the Moon's shadow moving toward the northeast before ending at sunset in South America. Most of the eclipse track falls on empty water, though a few scattered islands will also see the show. The site of greatest eclipse, where totality reaches its maximum of 5 minutes and 20 seconds, lies in open water, at longitude 121º53' west and latitude 9º45' south.
In a series of illustrated blog entries for Culture Lab, journalist and photographer Dan Falk will be describing his attempt to capture the "ultimate solar eclipse photograph" this July. This is the first in the series.
It's one of the most compelling spectacles in all of nature: a total eclipse of the sun, a surreal event in which the sun disappears behind the moon and a small part of the Earth is plunged into midday darkness.
I've seen three solar eclipses so far, and each has been a unique experience, but the one coming up on 11 July 2010 promises to be like nothing else I've ever witnessed. It's all about location: this summer's total eclipse can be seen only from the South Pacific Ocean, the extreme southern tip of South America and a few tiny, remote islands - including the most isolated inhabited spot on Earth, Easter Island.
Easter Island is famous for its remoteness as well as the remnants of its intriguing ancient culture, including those giant carved stone heads, known as moai. We've all seen photographs of those enigmatic moai, but never with a total solar eclipse as a backdrop. My visit to the island will be a chance to capture - if I may be permitted to indulge in a hopeful, boastful superlative - the "ultimate solar eclipse photograph".
On Sunday, July 11th: total solar eclipse on Easter Island
(same time zone as Mountain Time in the US)
Partial eclipse begins: 12:40:36 Altitude of Sun: 40°
Totality begins: 14:08:30 Altitude of Sun: 40°
Totality ends: 14:13:10 Altitude of Sun: 39°
Partial eclipse ends: 15:34:16 Altitude of Sun: 32°
Duration of totality: 4 minutes and 40 seconds
A group of astronomers are now on the mysterious Easter Island, one of the few solid places to stand on Earth where a total solar eclipse will be visible on July 11, 2010. The majority of the eclipse's path is over the ocean, so this will be one of the least observed eclipses ever. "This is one of the most interesting things that is possible for anyone on Earth to see in one of the most interesting places on the Earth that people can go," said Jay Pasachoff from Williams College, who is the Chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Eclipses. This will be his 51st eclipse.
While the eclipse is thousands of miles long in its is path of totality on Earth, it is just a few hundred miles wide. It will pass through French Polynesia on the Cook Islands, but, Pasachoff said, it doesn't go through any of the main islands. "It misses Tahiti, but there are some atolls off the side of the path, and some eclipse scientists and ecotourists will be on cruise ships that are going into the path of totality. There will also be a group on an airplane observing the eclipse and we hope to compare all the other observations with the ones we get from Easter Island," he said.
Easter Island is 4023 km (2,500 miles) west of Chile, and is famous for the Moai, giant statutes that were left by a Polynesian culture that mysteriously disappeared. But while the statues' constant gaze look outward, all human eyes will be on the skies on July 11. ...
Remote, Mysterious Easter Island at Sunrise (Credit: Getty Images)
Astronomers deemed the mysterious island the best place to witness Sunday's alignment of the sun, Earth and moon.
Easter Island is expecting some 4,000 visitors during Sunday's total solar eclipse.
The island is only 60 square miles and hosts large, 3000-year-old stone statues.
The barren island already suffers from water pollution and deforestation.
... authorities have increased security, especially around key heritage sites including the large stone statues, or moai, some 3,000 years old, for which Easter Island is famous.
The island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site inhabited by mostly ethnic Polynesians, had been feeling strained even before the eclipse.
... visitors will be told to treat the island with respect. "Easter Island is an open-air museum, and the eclipse is part of this museum"
On Sunday, 2010 July 11, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses Earth's southern Hemisphere. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow crosses the South Pacific Ocean where it makes no landfall except for Mangaia (Cook Islands) and Easter Island (Isla de Pascua). The path of totality ends just after reaching southern Chile and Argentina. The Moon's penumbral shadow produces a partial eclipse visible from a much larger region covering the South Pacific and southern South America.
Though no live coverage of the eclipse is planned, the National Geographic Channel will broadcast a special edition of Naked Science, "Easter Island Eclipse" with video from the eclipse shot earlier in the day, at 11:00pm EST on Sunday evening. The show will be rebroadcast on July 15th at 10pm.
Eclipse hunters set a new record on July 11 for the longest eclipse ever observed by civilians chasing the moon in an airplane. While hundreds of eclipse enthusiasts flocked to islands in the South Pacific to watch the moon blot out the sun, astronomer Glenn Schneider and colleagues climbed to 39,000 feet to spend 9 minutes, 23 seconds in the moon’s shadow.
“We cheated Mother Nature by two minutes beyond what she could normally produce,” Schneider said.
Theoretically, the longest total solar eclipse that can be viewed from the ground is 7 minutes, 32 seconds long, a limit set by the geometry of celestial mechanics. Total solar eclipses happen when the new moon passes in front of the sun, casting a round shadow on the Earth that turns day to night. During the few minutes when the moon is directly in front of the sun, called totality, viewers get a rare glimpse of the solar corona, tendrils of gas that dance around the sun’s outer atmosphere. Although a solar eclipse is visible from somewhere on Earth every 16 months or so, totality is only ever visible from a narrow swatch of the planet.
The geometry of the July 11 eclipse worked out such that, by chasing the moon’s shadow at Mach 0.8, Schneider and his colleagues could stretch totality to from about 5 minutes to nearly 9 and a half minutes.
Moonshadow
Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? And are you gonna stay the night?
Oh, I'm bein' followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow
Leapin and hoppin' on a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot wrote:
<<The Trundholm sun chariot (Danish: Solvognen), is a late Nordic Bronze Age artifact discovered in Denmark, that has been interpreted as a depiction of the sun being pulled by a mare that may have relation to later Norse mythology attested in 13th century sources.
The Trundholm sun chariot is a bronze statue of a mare and a large bronze disk, which are placed on a device with spoked wheels. The horse stands on a bronze rod supported by four wheels. The rod below the horse is connected to the disk, which is supported by two wheels. All of the wheels have four spokes. The artifact was cast in the lost wax method.
The sculpture was discovered in 1902 in the Trundholm moor in West Zealand County on the northwest coast of the island of Zealand (Sjælland) in Denmark, in a region known as Odsherred. The sculpture is in the collection of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.
The disk alone has a diameter of approximately 25 cm. It is gilded on one side only, the right-hand side (when looking in the direction of the horse). This has been interpreted as an indication of a belief that the sun is drawn across the heavens from East to West during the day, presenting its bright side to the Earth and returns from West to East during the night, when the dark side is being presented to the Earth. A continuation around a globe would have the same result.>>
