On 21st of June 2020 a rare annular eclipse will be visible from Africa and Asia
After the planetary conjunctions of April and the upcoming ATLAS comet visible in May (now it's approximately 150 million of km far from Earth), June will gift us an annular eclipse, visible form center Africa and south of Asia.
...annular eclipse? What?
It's rare but it may happen. You know that a solar eclipse is caused by the Moon interposition between Earth and Sun and, in case of a total one, generating a shadow on determined zone of Earth, depending on the position. The fact we cannot observe an eclipse every 15 days is quickly explained: Earth is inclined on its axis (23° degrees, the same reason we have seasons) and the Moon orbit is tilted by 5° degrees than the ecliptic plane. These reasons explain why solar eclipses are not frequent so often and, when they happen, why you see them in a different place every time.
An annular eclipse happen when the Moon is interposed perfectly with the Sun, but it is at the apogee, the maximum distance from Earth. In this case the Moon cover over the 90% of Sun disk, but being smaller than it, it leaves a small ring on the external border of the Sun
This time it will be visible at the sunrise in central Africa and South Asia. Here is the path of the eclipse
See you next time
