Rare midnight solar eclipse on June 1-2

New Delhi: The second partial solar eclipse of 2011 will happen on June 1. The eclipse will not cover India but can be seen from the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

The eclipse begins at sunrise in Siberia and northern China at about 00:55:18 IST and the maximum eclipse will occur at 02:46:11 IST. Even though the eclipse is a midnight eclipse, it can be viewed from latitudes north and nearby to the south of the Arctic Circle where the Sun is visible for 24 hours during summer months.

Northern most Norway, Sweden and Finland will get to witness the rare phenomenon with an eclipsed Sun hanging above the northern horizon. Other countries that fall in the path of the eclipse include Canada, China, Iceland, Japan and North Korea.

Another celestial spectacle can be witnessed only a couple of weeks later when the first lunar eclipse of the year occurs on June 15. The eclipse is a total lunar eclipse and will be visible from India.

The first solar eclipse of 2011 happened on January 4 and was a sunset eclipse visible from central Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northwest China.

The next partial solar eclipse will occur on July 1 in the Southern Hemisphere and will be visible a D-shaped region in the Antarctic Ocean south of Africa. Since the July 1 eclipse covers a remote and uninhabited portion of the Earth, it could very well be an eclipse that nobody will see.

The largest partial solar eclipse of 2011 will happen on November 25 and the event will be visible from the southern South Africa, Antarctica, Tasmania and New Zealand.

source: ibnlive.com