Terry's Astronomy Thread.

[Bluearrowll]

Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
April 30, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
April 30, 2014

-Can you see the hairline Moon yet in the west in twilight? It's about a fist-width to the lower right of Aldebaran for North American skywatchers. Binoculars will help. How about the departing Pleiades?

-When the sun set over Australia on April 29th, sky watchers noticed something odd. A piece of the sun was missing. The new Moon passed in front of the sun producing a partial eclipse as deep as 70%. This was the view from Adelaide, South Australia.

"Here the eclipse peaked at 51% and was still in progress as the sun was setting," says photographer Martin Lewicki. "We could see it clearly through the clouds."

Visibility of this eclipse was restricted to Australia and the coast of Antarctica. While Australians witnessed a partial eclipse, in Antarctica the Moon passed directly in front of the sun, producing a "ring of fire" annular eclipse. Photographs of that phase, however, might not be forthcoming because of the remote location.

Astro Picture of the Day:
April 30, 2014

Source:
If you look closely, you will see something quite unusual about this setting Sun. There are birds flying to the Sun's left, but that's not so unusual. A dark sea covers the Sun's bottom, and dark clouds cover parts of the middle, but they are also not very unusual. More unusual is the occulted piece at the top right. And that's no occulting cloud -- that's the Moon. Yesterday the Moon moved in front of part of the Sun as visible from Australia, and although many locations reported annoying clouds, a partially eclipsed Sun would occasionally peak through as it set. The above image was captured yesterday on the western horizon of Adelaide, South Australia. The maximum eclipse was visible only from a small part of Antarctica where the entire Moon could be seen covering the entire center of the Sun in what is known as an annular eclipse, leaving only a ring of fire from the Sun peaking out around the edges. The next solar eclipse will be another partial eclipse, will occur on 2014 October 23, and will be visible from most of North America near sunset.