Scientists gear up for longest total solar eclipse
Only a partial eclipse can be viewed from other Indian cities including the metros. Around 5.30 am, a dark ribbon will start wrapping up a west to east tract and will remain in place for about two hours. The eclipse will end just after 7.30 am.
Darkness will descend on July 22 when the 21st century’s longest total solar eclipse (TSE) will roll out a carpet of shadow across west, central and east India.
With the duration of 6 minutes and 39 seconds, this TSE will be the longest of the century and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132.
Even though there will be another TSE in 2034 that will be visible only from a limited part of India.
The full cosmic sequence of the July 22 TSE in which the Moon comes in front of the Sun and leaves after a few minutes – will be visible from cities like Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Varanasi and Patna.
According to the NASA forecast, Patna could be having the least cloud cover and rain probability making it the best observational site in India.
Only a partial eclipse can be viewed from other Indian cities including the metros.
Around 5.30 am, a dark ribbon will start wrapping up a west to east tract and will remain in place for about two hours. The eclipse will end just after 7.30 am.
But monsoon may turn the event into a damp squib. July being the peak of the monsoon month, astronomers are worrying about the cloud cover, which could block the rare celestial events like solar corona, shadow bands and diamond ring.
Solar physicists from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore; Udaipur Solar Observatory (USO) and Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Nainital will be camping in China for conducting scientific experiments to unravel some of the mysteries associated with the Sun.
“The totality in Shanghai will be 5 min 40 sec. We will conduct two sets of experiments involving spectroscopy and imaging the corona in two wave lengths,” IIA director Siraj Hasan told Deccan Herald.
The institute has procured high-end telescopes and CCD cameras to carry out these observations with a view to detect oscillations in the corona, he said.
