Skygazers' Triple Treat starts off with Midnight Eclipse!
A treat for all sky-gazers out there! Over the next month, the world will be experiencing three eclipses, two partial eclipses a month apart, and one total lunar eclipse in between. This triple treat starts with the coming midnight solar eclipse.
Possibility of a Solar Eclipse at midnight is rare. Chances of this happening are high in the Arctic region, often referred to as the Land of the midnight sun. But this week on June1-June2, it would be visible in regions of Asia, North America and Europe.
The Eclipse of June 2 is special for more reasons than one. First, it’s at midnight. Second thing to note is this eclipse begins on Thursday and ends on Wednesday. That’s right. The eclipse begins on dawn of June 2, in Northern China and Siberia, moves across the Arctic, will cross the International Date Line and will end in the early evening on Wednesday, June 01, 2011, in North Eastern Canada. Since observers in northern Russia and Scandinavia get to observe it over the North Pole, they will actually see it during midnight.
Exactly a month later, in Antarctica, on Friday, July 1, an equally unusual eclipse is reported to take place. Due to the southern winter, the sun will be below the horizon for almost all of Antarctica, except for a small uninhabited stretch of coast due south of Madagascar. The visibility of this eclipse is only in a small region in southern regions of South Africa. Chances are, only penguins and sea birds will witness this eclipse.
In between the above mentioned eclipses, a total lunar eclipse is also certain, creating a blood-red moon, somewhere around June 15th. Unfortunately for the North Americans, they won’t have the privilege to view this eclipse. Anyhow, this will not get totally un-noticed. It will garner millions of spectators in Africa, middle-east and south-western Asia, since the moon rises in South America and Europe, and sets in Asia and Australia.
