First Solar Eclipse 2010 will be Annular Eclipse on 15th January 2010

The first Solar Eclipse of 2010 will be on 15th January 2010. Acdcording to NASA, It will be an annular Eclipse with magnitude of 0.9190. The Eclipse will start from Uganda (Africa) and pass through the Indian Ocean to finally move through Nepal, south India to China. The solar eclipse will be visible across certain part of Central Africa, Maldives, South India, Sri Lanka, Burma and parts of China including whole Nepal.The eclipse will be best viewed from Maldives where the duration of the eclipse is expected to last about 11 minutes. This eclipse will also be visible as a partial solar eclipse in nearby areas indicated by the shadow in animation below.

The total eclipse will begin at about 5:13 GMT and ends at 8:59 GMT – The greatest eclipse view is expected at 7:07 GMT. For the sidenote, Mauritius is at GMT+4, so just add 4 hours to the time above to get the time here.

The annular solar eclipse is different from total solar eclipse in the way that the apparent diameter of the moon seems smaller than the sun’s diameter. This is due to the moon being further away from earth. Therefore the eclipse will make the sun looks like an annulus (e.i ring) like in the first picture.