Solar eclipse mostly for penguins

An extreme eclipse cruise
Finally, at 3:39 UT, as the antumbra starts to slide off of Antarctica and out into the Pacific Ocean, it will pass almost directly over the Russkaya Antarctic research station, which originally opened on March 9, 1980, but was mothballed on March 12, 1990. However, according to Valeriy Lukin, the head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition (RAE), a research ship departed Melbourne, Australia, on Jan. 16 and will be at the Russkaya station from Feb. 5 to 9.

This station is located in the Pacific sector of Antarctica, which is poorly covered by scientific studies. An automatic weather station and GPS station will be installed at Russkaya. So as the antumbra departs Antarctica, perhaps those few intrepid scientists on board this research vessel will bear witness to the ringed sun.

Looking low to the west-southwest during this last full month of Antarctic summer, they will see (weather permitting) the midnight sun describing a shallow arc across the sky from right to left, almost scraping the southern horizon at its lowest point. But on Feb. 7, the silhouette of the new moon will move onto it from the left and manifest itself as a black mask, eventually covering all of the sun save for a brilliant ring. Those few scientists onboard would be looking along a line which makes nearly a tangent to the Earth, then departs from it into space and reaches the tip of the umbra; light from the rim of the sun will stream down either side of the umbra to reach their eyes.

The duration of the ring phase at Russkaya will last 2 minutes 8 seconds.

Partial eclipse down-under
By this time, the outer penumbral shadow has plodded to the northeast encompassing New Zealand, Tasmania and the eastern quarter of Australia. The latter two regions will see less than one-quarter of the sun's diameter covered by the moon; New Zealanders however will see a more substantial obscuration, with the moon reaching roughly three-fifths of the way across the solar disk. Here, about halfway up in the northwest sky, the moon will appear to quickly move in from the sun's left edge and about an hour later at around 5:45 p.m. local time (give or take some minutes depending on the location) the sun will resemble a fat crescent, with cusps pointed up and a large chunk of its upper portion eclipsed.

The penumbra also reaches up to touch some of the south Pacific Islands that are scattered to the north, such as New Caledonia and the Republic of Vanuatu. At 4:31 UT the antumbral shadow has slipped off of the Earth, followed one hour and 41 minutes later by the last edge of the penumbra departing the Earth and the last slight scallop in the setting sun might be seen to the north of Mata'utu, Wallis and Futuna Islands.

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

Water discovery fuels hope to colonize moon ‘Significant amount’ of water found on moon Get the most from a promising meteor show   All systems go for space shuttle launch World not ending in 2012, says NASA Cosmic Log: Marvelous view ... and a mystery Broken urine recycler may affect space mission Stuck Mars rover gets set to attempt great escape New research module arrives at space station   Month in space: What a blast! Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: