Ring of Fire

Last week, some people looked in the sky and saw the moon upstaging the sun

On January 15, the Moon's shadow raced across parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, giving the thousands of people caught in it a rare treat: an annular solar eclipse, a partial eclipse in which the moon's diameter appears to be contained completely within the Sun's edge, creating a dramatic ring of fire.

A slideshow on the Washington Post Web site includes images of the eclipse itself, as well as photographs of people in India, China, Kenya, Jordan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and South Korea who viewed the event.

The eclipse lasted a little over 11 minutes, the longest such eclipse for the next 1,000 years.

GET INVOLVED

• Join the Great World Wide Star Count
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• Download Google Earth 5.0, which has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars

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image: the Moon's silhouette just before mid-eclipse taken within the eclipse path from the city of Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India; the telescopic image was made through a filter that blocks most visible light, but still transmits light from hydrogen atoms (credit: Mikael Svalgaard)