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Surprising Science — May 1, 2014

Southern Annular Eclipse

Eclipse season came to a close this week for now. As we’ve previously reported here on Big Think, we’re in for 18 months of show-stopper eclipses known as the “blood moon” tetrad.

NASA published this incredible photo of an annular solar eclipse–a “ring of fire”–from last May, which was captured near Coen, Australia. Unfortunately, this most recent annular solar eclipse on April 29 was best viewed from Antarctica. And the chance of capturing an image like this one is difficult enough: the window is around 50 seconds long as the eclipse enters the annular phase.

Image credit: NASA

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