November 3rd's Rare Solar Eclipse

Syzygially speaking, the year's big event is a "hybrid" solar eclipse. The Moon passes directly across the Sun, yielding a fleeting annular eclipse at the beginning and a relatively brief total eclipse later on. When the Moon passes directly between the Sun and Earth, the usual outcome is either a total or annular solar eclipse. But the event on November 3rd is something of a hybrid. At the point in the North Atlantic where the Moon's umbral shadow begins its dash across Earth, about 600 miles (1,000 km) east of Jacksonville, Florida, an extremely well-placed observer would get to see a vestigial ring of Sun surrounding the Moon's silhouette for a few fleeting seconds just after sunrise. But after that, as it races southeastward, the shadow's footprint is also moving closer to the Moon due to Earth's curvature. So the appearance switches to and remains a total eclipse — though a relatively short one. "Greatest eclipse," offering 99½ seconds of totality, occurs about 12:46 Universal Time at a point about 200 miles (330 km) southwest of the Liberian coast. The Moon's umbral shadow is only 29 miles wide (47 km) when it makes landfall in Gabon, where there'll be 68 seconds of totality. Then it slides east-northeastward through Congo (up to 53 seconds), Democratic Republic of the Congo (44 seconds), Uganda (19 seconds), northern Kenya (13 seconds), before ending in southern Ethiopia and westernmost Somalia (1 second at sunset).

Source: sky nd telescope...