Chennai: India will witness a solar eclipse on 21 June. According to an official, it will be annular in some parts of the country, where skygazers will get an opportunity to observe the ‘ring of fire during the phenomenon. For most parts of the country, the eclipse will however be partial.
According to Director of the M P Birla Planetarium Debi Prasad Duari, the path of the annular solar eclipse will start near Gharsana in Rajasthan around 10:12 am and the phase of annularity will begin around 11:49 am and end at 11:50 am.
The ring of fire will be visible for that one minute from places such as Suratgarh and Anupgarh in Rajasthan, Sirsa, Ratia and Kurukshetra in Haryana, and Dehradun, Chamba, Chamoli and Joshimath in Uttarakhand.
However, the ring of fire will not be as prominent this time as it was on December 26 last year and will be a little narrower, he added.
He said in a statement: “The annular solar eclipse occurs when the sun, moon and the earth come in a straight line and almost on the same plane. At that moment, the moon must be farther away from the earth in its elliptical orbit and hence, cannot cover the disc of the sun completely, resulting in a narrow band of light around the dark silhouette of the moon, making the ring of fire visible.”
But from a much wider-region country, people can observe a partial solar eclipse of a different magnitude.
Chennai timing
In Kolkata, the partial eclipse will begin at 10:46 am and end at 2:17 pm, while the timing will be from 10:20 am to 1:48 pm in New Delhi, from 10 am to 1:27 pm in Mumbai, from 10:22 am to 1:41 pm in Chennai and between 10.13 am and 1.31 pm in Bengaluru.