posted 11-13-2012 10:54 AM               

Total solar eclipse: Last until 2015

Today's total solar eclipse — the first since July 2010 and the last until March 2015 — begins at 3:35 p.m. EST (20:35 GMT) Tuesday (Nov. 13), which corresponds to shortly after dawn Wednesday (Nov. 14) local time in Australia.

Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible from slivers of the continent's Northern Territory and state of Queensland, as well as a large, empty stretch of the Pacific Ocean.

Most of the world's population will be far from the eclipse's path. But anyone can follow along live, for several organizations will provide free webcasts of the alignment of sun and moon.

Two such broadcasts will be provided by the Tourism Tropical North Queensland and the Slooh Space Camera, which will begin at 1 p.m. EST (18:00 GMT) and 2:30 p.m. EST (19:30 GMT), respectively.

posted 11-14-2012 01:02 PM               

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Originally posted by Max Q:
Looking at the NASA Solar Eclipse page, I read with interest that the longest eclipse within the 5000 year calendar to be 7 minutes, 29 seconds of totality with the shortest being just 9 seconds.

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It is possible to observe even shorter total eclipses. The shortest duration would be 0 seconds and occurs during a hybrid total/annular eclipse at the point(s) of transition between the two types along the central path.

There is one such eclipse coming next year. At sunrise the moon covers only 99.9% of the sun and observers would see a 4 second annular eclipse. One minute later, 101% of the sun is covered and observers at that point of the central path would see a 3 second total solar eclipse. In between is a transition point where a 0 second total solar eclipse would be seen.

The magnitude of the eclipse grows (due to the curvature of the earth) and at maximum totality lasts 1 minute 40 seconds.

Here is a table of the event times for the 2013 eclipse.

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Total solar eclipse: Last until 2015

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