Eclipse annular

The annular eclipse of 15 January 2010

The annular eclipse of January 15, 2010 was visible from Africa, the Indian Ocean, India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.
Shadow of the Moon has traversed half the Earth.
The partial eclipse was visible over eastern Africa, south-west Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. On its way the moon has drawn a complete shadow on Earth in a exceptional width from 323 to 366 km.
The privileged who were at the center of the shadow have seen an annular eclipse because the apparent size of the Moon at this point in its orbit is too small to completely cover the solar disk.
The maximum of the eclipse occurred at 7:06 UTC.
The annular phase of this spectacular ring of fire, lasted up to 11 minutes and 8 seconds, which made it the longest annular eclipse of the millennium.
This beautiful photo of the silhouette just before the lunar mid-eclipse, was taken to Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India.

Image: The solar eclipse is called annular if the visible part of the Sun takes the form of a ring because the lunar disk does not completely hidden.
On January 15, 2010, at the first New Moon of the year, part of the planet has had the chance to watch the first eclipse of the Sun. The moon was almost at its peak, that is farthest from Earth (405,000 km). At that distance its apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun.
This picture is exceptional because there will be no longer than annular eclipse it before 23 December 3043.
This image taken from Kanyakumari telescope was filtered while passing radiation from hydrogen atoms, the famous H-alpha, it allows to observe the granular texture of the surface of the Sun.
Credit & Copyright: Mikael Svalgaard

Kanyakurami India - google map