Millions of people will enjoy one of the most spectacular celestial shows Friday morning – a total solar eclipse. Unfortunately not everyone will be able to see this rare event. It will be seen in only a small part of the world and Dubai, just like the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, isn’t among the lucky destinations.
However, places from where we can observe the eclipse are pretty close, so residents of the UAE can try traveling to Europe or North Africa this weekend. The total solar eclipse will be visible only far north from the Faroe Islands and Svalbard, but millions of people will witness a partial eclipse in much of Europe, North/East Asia, North/West Africa, Greenland, parts of North America and the Arctic. In fact, people in some parts of the Middle East will also see the spectacle, where up to 40% of the sun will be covered. The exact time of the eclipse will depend of course on your location, but astronomers say it will be between 8.00 a.m. and 10 a.m. GMT.
And watching it in person isn’t the only way to observe it – you can watch the solar eclipse live online on various websites. The solar eclipse has been a real mystery for centuries and a reason for plenty of superstitions and fears among ancient people. But today we know that it occurs when the sun, moon and Earth are aligned, so that the moon’s shadow reaches the surface of the Earth. It is one of the most beautiful and rare of natural phenomena and although it occurs almost every year, it can be observed from the same location every half a century or so. For example, the last time a total solar eclipse was seen in the Faroe Islands was June 30, 1954.
The next total solar eclipse will be on March 9, 2016, and will be visible from Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and the Pacific, while people in Australia will be to observe just a partial eclipse. And in 2017, another total eclipse will be visible from the contiguous United States.
