LIMA, PERU: Six-picture combo of a rare type of eclipse called “hybrid eclipse” which occurs … [+]
There will be an unusual three-for-one deal on solar eclipses later this month that we don’t see too often.
A rare hybrid eclipse will be visible in parts of Australia, southeast Asia and the south Pacific on April 20.
An eclipse happens when the moon passes between the earth and the sun. There’s different types of eclipses, which is generally determined by how and how much the moon’s disc blocks out the sun’s light.
The most dramatic such event is a total lunar eclipse, when the moon completely obscures the sun and day can literally turn to dusk momentarily. The whole world darkens, temperatures drop and animals (including humans) freak out.
As you can easily guess, a partial solar eclipse is when the moon just partially covers the sun. This is an event that can easily be missed if you don’t know how to safely observe it, which just demonstrates how crazy powerful the sun is — it can be halfway blocked in the middle of the day and most people won’t even notice.
Then there is the annular eclipse, which is a fascinating alignment when the moon almost covers the entire sun, but its outer layers manage to shine around the edges of the lunar disc, creating an eerie “ring of fire” appearance.
Essentially, what type of eclipse you get from a given location is all a matter of the curvature of the Earth combined with basic geometry, dependent on the alignment of the sun, moon and your specific spot on the surface of the planet.
With the April 20 eclipse we get all three of these main types of eclipse in one.
An eclipse map for April 20, 2023.
“In this particular case the eclipse path starts out as annular,” writes emeritus NASA astrophysicist and eclipse aficionado Fred Espenak. “Further down the track it changes to total and then back to annular before the path ends.”
And for those just outside the path of totality, a partial solar eclipse may be all that’s visible.
If you’re going to be anywhere on this map on that day, you can use this tool to calculate what you might expect to see from a certain location.
This will be the first solar eclipse of 2023. There will be another annular eclipse in October and then a year from now we’ll get another “Great American Eclipse” when a total solar eclipse criss-crosses North America in April, 2024.
