ring of fire - maybe a possible meet up in Albuquerque? [View all]

[Kali]

I would love to do something like this. It might even be feasible...

Mark your calendar. On Sunday, May 20th, the sun is going to turn into a ring of fire. It's an annular solar eclipse--the first one in the USA in almost 18 years. Tucson will be able to see much of it, but northern Arizona and southern Utah will have the best show.

An "annular" eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly in front of the sun, but the lunar disk is not quite wide enough to cover the entire star. At maximum, the Moon forms a "black hole" in the center of the sun."The ring of fire:" Astrophotographer Dennis L. Mammana photographed this annular eclipse behind palm trees in January 1994. Copyright D. L. Mammana.

The "path of annularity" is a strip about 300 km wide and thousands of km long. It stretches from China and Japan, across the Pacific Ocean, to the middle of North America. In the United States, the afternoon sun will become a luminous ring in places such as Medford, Oregon; Chico, California; Reno, Nevada; St. George, Utah; Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Lubbock, Texas.

Outside of this relatively narrow zone, the eclipse will be partial. Observers almost everywhere west of the Mississippi, including Tucson, will see a crescent-shaped sun as the Moon passes by off-center.

vid: 3:09