An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon’s descending node of the orbit on Thursday, December 26, 2019. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.
The annularity was visible in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam.
Details
Visibility and viewing
It was the last solar eclipse of 2019. The central path of the 2019 annular eclipse passed through the Saudi Arabian peninsula, southern India, Sumatra, Borneo, Philippines and Guam. A partial eclipse was visible thousands of kilometers wide from the central path. It covered small parts of Eastern Europe, much of Asia, North and West Australia, Eastern Africa, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. The eclipse started with an antumbra having a magnitude of 0.96; it stretched 164 kilometers wide, and traveled eastwards at an average rate of 1.1 kilometers per second. The longest duration of annularity was 3 minutes and 40 seconds, at 5.30 UT1 occurring in the South China Sea (0°45'54.0"N 105°29'06.0"E).
The eclipse began in Saudi Arabia about 220 kilometers northeast of Riyadh at 03:43 UT1 and ended in Guam at 06:59.4 UT1. It reached India near Kannur, Kerala, at 03:56 UT1. The shadow reached the southeast coast of India at 04:04 UT1. Traveling through northern Sri Lanka, it headed into the Bay of Bengal. The next main visible places were Palau (Malaysia), Sumatra and Singapore. It then passed through the South China Sea, crossed Borneo and the Celebes Sea, the Philippines archipelago and then headed towards the western Pacific. The antumbral shadow encountered Guam at 6:56 UT1 and rose back into space.
Gallery
Related eclipses
Eclipses of 2019
A partial solar eclipse on January 6. A total lunar eclipse on January 21. A total solar eclipse on July 2. A partial lunar eclipse on July 16. An annular solar eclipse on December 26. Astronomers Without Borders collected eclipse glasses for redistribution to Latin America and Asia for their 2019 eclipses from the Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017.