Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Sun's 'Ring of Fire' down under probed by telescope web cams - Register

Vids Parts of Australia and Asia today experienced an "annular" eclipse, a phenomenon whereby the Moon covers just about all of the Sun except for a "ring of fire" on our star's rim.

The best spot to view the eclipse was down under at about 2300 PDT (0600 UTC). Vulture South's crew tried to take some snaps of the eclipse, but, sadly, cloud cover made this the worst ... eclipse ... ever, so no photography was possible. Not even "oh look – the tree is making lots of little crescent-shaped shadows" pics.

So over to the internet where live video streams of the event, captured by ground telescopes, were rather more detailed. Here's the Slooh observatory's feed of the eclipse, which you can play back:

And here's The Virtual Telescope's output.

On the off-chance Australia's ABC News 24 had something of interest, here's its live feed, too.

Public service announcement

And a quick reminder for those of you in places where the eclipse is visible: DON'T LOOK AT IT OR YOU'LL BURN OUT YOUR EYES. Tune in to the feeds above, instead. ®

Source : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/29/live_video_ring_of_fire_partial_solar_eclipse/