If the sun goes annular, you'll see bright rings on the ground. During a partial eclipse, the circles will turn into half-moons or crescents. The simplest way to get a sense of the eclipse is to find a semi-shady spot and watch the circles of sunlight falling through tree leaves. This Exploratorium webpage shows you how. National Park ServiceĪnother way to view the eclipse is to fashion a "pinhole camera" from a box, aluminum foil and a sheet of white paper - or even from just two squares of cardboard. A partial solar eclipse can be seen from the parks outside the zone that are marked in orange. national parks within the zone of annularity for the May 20 solar eclipse. NASA's top eclipse expert, Fred Espenak, offers a guide to photographing any kind of solar eclipse easily and safely. Same goes for your camera: Unless you know what you're doing, taking a picture of the sun without the proper filter is a good way to ruin your point-and-shoot. The filters should be specially designed for solar viewing. You can also put a solar filter on your telescope or binoculars - but regular sunglasses won't do the trick. Eclipse shades are available as well from Rainbow Symphony and lots of other online vendors. You can buy safety glasses for less than a buck each from, with all of the proceeds going to support Astronomers Without Borders. Because of the moon's position with relation to Earth, the lunar disk will never block the sun completely, but will leave at least an edge of the solar disk exposed.įor that reason, it's important to use the proper protection when gazing at the eclipse, even during the "Ring of Fire" phase. Over the course of three and a half hours, the moon will blot out at least part of the sun, as seen from earthly locales stretching from Southeast Asia through China and the Pacific to North America and Greenland. This eclipse will be an international spectacle that's not to be missed. Don't dawdle over your travel plans: Some of the park events, such as a viewing session from New Mexico's Petroglyph National Monument, are already sold out. The park service has put together an interactive website that shows you where the eclipse will be visible, lists events tied to the eclipse and provides more online resources about the phenomenon. "That 'bite' will take out 55 to 80 percent of the disk of the sun, depending on where you are, and that's still a very special experience."
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"Think of Pac-Man taking a bite out of the sun," Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, said in a news release.
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Outside the strip, Westerners will see a partial solar eclipse for the first time in seven years.