• 'Ring of Fire' solar eclipse puts on a dazzling show in Australian Outback

    The dazzling "ring of fire" seen in the Australian Outback was produced when the moon moved between the Earth and the sun. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    By Kristen Gelineau, The Associated Press

    SYDNEY — Skygazers across the Australian Outback were among the lucky few to witness a solar eclipse on Friday as the moon glided between Earth and the sun, blocking everything but a dazzling ring of light.

    The celestial spectacle, known as a "ring of fire" eclipse, was the second solar eclipse visible from northern Australia in six months. In November, a total solar eclipse plunged the country's northeast into darkness, delighting astronomers and tourists who flocked to the region from across the globe to witness it.

    Friday's eclipse, also called an annular solar eclipse, was not considered as scientifically important or dramatic as November's, because the moon is too far from Earth — and therefore appears too small — to black out the sun completely. Unlike a total solar eclipse, which essentially turns day into night, an annular eclipse just dims the sunlight.

    "A total eclipse is overall far more spectacular, far more emotional," said Andrew Jacob, an astronomer at Sydney Observatory. Still, he said, Friday's eclipse provided "a nice ring of sunlight in the sky."

    At remote outposts across Australia, scientists and spectators watched as the eclipse cast an approximately 200-kilometer-wide (120-mile-wide) shadow at dawn over Western Australia. The moon's shadow moved east through the Northern Territory and the top of Queensland state, then across Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the tiny island nation of Kiribati. The show ended at sunset over a largely uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean.

    Nicole Hollenbeck

    The annular solar eclipse blazes in the morning sky south of Newman, Australia. The "second sun" is a lens effect. For more about Nicole Hollenbeck's photo, check SpaceWeather.com.

    Joerg Schoppmeyer

    A filtered view of the annular solar eclipse highlights the "ring of fire" effect. Click on the picture for more eclipse views from photographer Joerg Schoppmeyer.

    Geoff Sims

    Photographer Geoff Sims captured this view of the annular solar eclipse from a ridge west of Plutonic Gold Mine, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) from Newman, Australia. "The horizon was perfectly clear - what an amazing sight seeing the squished sun in annular eclipse," Sims wrote in his Facebook posting. He's working on a collaborative imaging and time-lapse program with colleague Colin Legg. Click on the image to see more of Sims' work at https://www.facebook.com/BeyondBeneath

    David Gray / Reuters

    Women wear protective glasses as they gaze at Friday's solar eclipse from Sydney's Observatory Hill.

    David Gray / Reuters

    A telescope set up on Sydney's Observatory hill projects an image of the partial solar eclipse onto a screen.

    Skywatchers in Australia catch a "ring of fire" eclipse. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    The eclipse lasted between three and six minutes, depending on its location, and blacked out around 95 percent of the sun at its peak. A partial eclipse was visible to people in other parts of Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

    Astronomer Jay Pasachoff, who traveled from Williams College in Massachusetts to Australia to view his 57th solar eclipse, drove to a remote hill in the Outback about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the Northern Territory town of Tennant Creek, where he and around 100 others enjoyed one of the best and longest views of the eclipse in Australia.

    Amateur astronomers clicked away on cameras, and local high-school students measured the drop in temperature as the moon moved in front of the sun and blocked out much of the light. The moment, Pasachoff said, was magical.

    "The color of the light changes in an eerie fashion, and you sense that something very strange and weird and wonderful is going on," Pasachoff said.

    More about the solar eclipse:

    Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Can't get to Australia? Get an online look at the 'ring of fire' solar eclipse

    Slideshow: Greatest solar eclipse hits

    Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis

    See stunning images from past solar eclipses going back to the 1920s.

    Launch slideshow

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    If you can't make it to the South Pacific's eclipse zone in time to watch the sun turn into a "ring of fire" on Thursday, you can still get in on the spectacle online.

    The annular solar eclipse begins at 6:30 p.m. ET (22:30 GMT) in western Australia. Over the course of several hours, the moon's shadow will sweep across Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Pacific from east to west, fading into the sunset off the coast of South America.

    Because of the relative position of moon, sun and Earth, the moon can't cover the sun's disk completely. For observers who are situated within a strip of Earth's surface that measures 100 to 140 miles (171 to 225 kilometers) wide and thousands of miles long, only the outer edge of the sun will remain uncovered. That's what produces the eerie ring of fire.

    The sight will be much like what was visible during last May's annular solar eclipse, and the course of the eclipse will be similar to the Pacific path that was taken by the moon's shadow during last November's total solar eclipse.

    If you are in the zone for the ring of fire, be careful: Even that slim ring of sunshine packs enough of a punch to burn your eyes, and you'll need to take precautions. Those precautions can take the form of eclipse-viewing glasses or filters, or pinhole-camera rigs that let you view the eclipse indirectly.

    Caution should be the watchword as well for those who can observe the eclipse's partial phase from a wide swath of the Pacific, ranging from New Zealand to Indonesia and Hawaii, as shown in the animation below. NASA's Eclipse website provides further details, including precise time schedules for the eclipse in a variety of locales.

    An animation from Eclipse-Maps shows the progress of the annular solar eclipse over Australia and the South Pacific. The outer curve shows where the sun is partially eclipse at the given time. The small inner curve shows where the annular eclipse is in progress.

    If you're entirely outside the eclipse zone, you won't be so sorely tempted to gaze at the sun. Instead, you can enjoy totally safe views of the eclipse online. Click on the links below for a few of the options:

    Slooh Space Camera: Slooh's coverage begins at 5:30 p.m. ET, during the partial phase that leads up to annularity. Slooh's team will provide the commentary for live video feeds from Tennant Creek, Cape Melville National Park and Cairns in Australia. The show also will feature occasional shots of the unsullied sun from Arizona's Prescott Observatory. You can use a Web browser or Slooh's iPad app to tune in.

    Coca-Cola Space Science Center: The Georgia-based center will provide a live video feed from Australia's Cape York starting at 5 p.m. ET.

    Amateur webcams: Australian skywatcher Gerard Lazarus is gearing up to capture live video of the eclipse, and there may be other on-the-fly feeds. Follow the Twitter hashtag #ASE2013 for updates. 

    Television Down Under: The eclipse is likely to make news Down Under, and it's worth checking Sky News Australia and 3News in New Zealand for TV coverage.

    If you miss it: Check SpaceWeather.com, Space.com and Universe Today for images of the eclipse after it takes place. You'll also want to keep tabs on Geoff Sims (@beyond_beneath) and Colin Legg (@colinleggphoto) on Twitter.

    If you catch it: Got pictures? Please feel free to share 'em with us via NBCNews.com's FirstPerson photo upload page, and we'll pass along a selection of eclipse pics.

    More about the eclipse:

    Tip o' the Log to Michael Zeiler and Amanda Bauer for eclipse tips.

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • No lunar eclipse in your locale? You can watch the moon darken online

    China Photos / Getty Images file

    A partial eclipse creeps over the moon's disk in 2007, as seen from China's Chongqing Municipality. Thursday's partial lunar eclipse will be similarly shallow.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Looking for a darkening moon? Thursday's partial lunar eclipse will be particularly subtle, and it won't be visible at all from North America — but you can still catch the show, such as it is, on the Web.

    Lunar eclipses occur when Earth's shadow blots out part of the full moon's disk. When the shadow covers the whole disk, the moon takes on an eerie reddish glow. The effect is much less pronounced during a partial eclipse. And NASA's eclipse expert, Fred Espenak, says Thursday's eclipse will be "barely partial": Earth's umbral shadow will reach less than 1.5 percent across the moon at the most.

    That means the partial phase will last just 27 minutes, from 3:54 to 4:21 p.m. ET. That's the shortest duration for a partial lunar eclipse since 1958. But there's more to the event than those 27 minutes: Before and after the partial phase, the moon passes through a semi-shaded region of space during what's known as the eclipse's penumbral phase. When you add that in, the darkening of the moon lasts more than four hours.

    Unfortunately for North Americans who want to watch the subtle spectacle with their own eyes, it's an inconvenient four hours — lasting from 2:03 to 6:11 p.m. ET, when the sun is in the sky and the moon isn't. Europeans and Africans, Asians and Australians are in a much better position.

    This map shows how much of the eclipse is visible from where:

    NASA

    North America is the only continent that is totally out of the picture for Thursday's partial lunar eclipse. P1 marks the beginning of the penumbral phase, U1 is the start of the partial phase, U4 is the partial phase's end, and P4 is the penumbral phase's end.

    Thursday's event is the only partial lunar eclipse of 2013. Two other moon-darkenings, on May 25 and Oct. 18, only get as far as the penumbral phase. There'll be solar eclipses in May and November of this year — but if you're partial to lunar eclipses, this is as good as it gets until next April.

    If you're outside the eclipse zone, or if the skies are cloudy, you can turn to the Web:

    • Slooh Space Camera is planning to air free live video from an array of cameras starting at 3 p.m. ET. You can watch the Slooh webcast, or you can download an iPad app and touch the broadcasting icon to watch it on a tablet. Lucie Green, a frequent BBC contributor and solar researcher based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, heads up Slooh's team of commentators. "The broadcast is scheduled for one and a half hours," Slooh's president, Patrick Paolucci, told NBC News in an email. "We will have feeds from South Africa, Dubai, India and maybe Cyprus — although some of these may have to drop out due to weather." Find out more from Slooh's news release.
    • Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 will begin its webcast coverage from Italy at 3:30 p.m. ET and keep the signal up until 4:50 p.m. ET. "This will not be a spectacular event, as the moon will enter only marginally the Earth's shadow, but it will be well worth a look," says Gianluca Masi, who manages the Virtual Telescope Project as well as the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Ceccano.
    • Indian television may offer other options: For Hindus, a lunar eclipse is a religious occasion known as Chandra Grahan. "Chandra Grahan in India will be most probably live telecast by news channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN, Aaj Tak, Sun News, Times Now, ABP Star News, Zee News, India TV, etc.," K. Kandaswamy says on his Live Trend blog.

    Even if you miss out on the live feeds, it's a good bet that SpaceWeather.com and Space.com will have pictures of the eclipse afterward. If you snap a nice photo of the darkening moon, please share it with us via NBC News' FirstPerson photo upload website.

    More about lunar eclipses:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • See a solar eclipse from outer space

    The moon takes a bite out of the sun's disk in this extreme ultraviolet view from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    The heavens have to align just right for a solar eclipse — and for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, today was the day the heavens aligned. The only place where you could see today's partial eclipse was in outer space. But don't worry: Some of us earthlings will get a couple of chances later this year.

    The Solar Dynamics Observatory watches the sun in multiple wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light from a vantage point in geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

    Sometimes other celestial bodies muscle in on SDO's view of the sun. Earth itself gets in the way twice a year, around the time of the spring and autumn equinoxes. Today, it was the moon's turn to take a bite out of the sun's bright disk.

    Although this brief obstruction cut into the $850 million mission's observing time, the SDO team tried to make use of the opportunity, project scientist Dean Pesnell said in a blog posting. During its transit, the moon blocked the probe's view of an active region on the sun. That caused a dip in the energy recorded by the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, or EVE, which "may allow scientists to calibrate the energy emitted by the active region," Pesnell said.

    SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips mentions another opportunity provided by the eclipse: "The sharp edge of the lunar limb helps researchers measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope ... how light diffracts around the telescope's optics and filter support grids. Once these are calibrated, it is possible to correct SDO data for instrumental effects and sharpen the images even more than before."

    Observers in a wide swath of East Asia, the Pacific and western North America will be able to see a partial solar eclipse with their own eyes on May 20. Some lucky folks will see something even rarer: an annular eclipse, in which the moon covers up most of the sun but leaves a thin ring of the bright disk shining in the sky. The U.S. West Coast and Southwest will be prime territory for that "ring of fire" eclipse.

    On Nov. 13, a total solar eclipse will be visible from a corner of Australia and a long strip of the Pacific Ocean. You'll be hearing a lot more about these eclipses as we get closer to the events. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this time-lapse view of the space eclipse:

    Spectacular images of a partial solar eclipse caught on video by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    More views of the sun:

    Updated at 9:40 p.m. ET Feb. 23 to add the "Nightly News" video of the space eclipse.

    Alan Boyle is science editor for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding the Cosmic Log Google+ page to your circles. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.