May 10 solar eclipse visible in southern PH

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An annular solar eclipse will be seen Friday, May 10, across large areas of the Pacific, including areas in the southern Philippines

Courtesy of Eclipse-Maps.com

MANILA, Philippines – An annular solar eclipse will be seen Friday, May 10, across large areas of the Pacific, including areas in the southern Philippines.

The eclipse, during which the moon’s orbit takes it between the earth and the sun, will be visible across a large part of the central and southern areas of the Pacific Ocean, large areas of Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

In this astronomical event, most of the sun will be blocked out by the moon; but the moon’s apparent diameter, as seen from earth, will appear 4.5% smaller, thus a thin sliver of the sun’s light will appear around the moon – what astronomers call a “ring of fire,” or an annulus.

Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC. Time is in UTC.The Visayas, Mindanao, Palawan, and some parts of south Luzon will see a partial eclipse between 5:20 and 7:33 am. General Santos City will have one of the best views in the country, where people will be able to see 19.2% of the sun’s surface area obscured.

The total eclipse will be seen across northwest and northern Australia, parts of Papua New Guinea, and across several Pacific islands, taking a curved path more than 13,000 kilometers long, and between 171 to 225 km in width.

Queensland, Australia, will be one of the best places to view the eclipse – and it will be the state’s second solar eclipse in the past 6 months, reports Space.com.

However, the best place to view the eclipse won’t be on land – it will be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, just a bit east of the Marshall Islands and Nauru.

In this spot – called the instant of greatest eclipse – the duration of the eclipse will be 6 minutes 3 seconds long. 

Experts warn, however, to take precautions when looking at the eclipse. In particular, people should never look at the sun with only the naked eye.

More information on the eclipse can be found at the PAGASA and NASA websites. – with reports from KD Suarez/Rappler.com

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