This Friday we'll once again have the amazing spectacle of a total solar eclipse. This usually happens about once a year somewhere in the world (although the last one was in 2006), but for any given point on the globe it's more like once a century.
The event of this year will be visible in the far north of Canada, the northern tip of Greenland and on a large swatch of Russia, Mongolia and China (yes, it does look like everything happens in China nowadays); also, almost all of Europe (except Portugal and Spain), most of Russia and China, all of the Middle East and India will see a partial eclipse. Totality will start in Nunavut, in Canada, at 19:21 Melbourne time (09:21 UTC), and end in northern China at 21:21 Melbourne Time (11:21 UTC).
As usual, NASA has a very detailed web page dedicated to the eclipse, including an embedded Google Map showing the path of totality and technical information for any given point. Plus, for those of us outside the path of the eclipse, NASA will also be broadcasting the event live from China starting at 20:00 Melbourne time (10:00 UTC) on Friday.
The next total eclipse will happen in July of 2009, but before that we'll have a partial lunar eclipse on 16 August that will be partially visible from Australia. More details closer to the event.
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