Century's longest annular solar eclipse on Friday

The solar eclipse on January 15,2010 is the longest annular solar eclipse that will occur in the 21st century.Astronomy lovers will be able to witness the century's longest annular solar eclipse on Friday.

In annular solar eclipse, the Sun appears as a very bright annulus, which in Latin means 'ring', surrounding the outline of the Moon, giving the appearance of a 'Ring of Fire', Devgun said.

The photosphere of the sun shall be covered by the moon thereby forming a ring of fire in the sky for more than 10 minutes in some parts of India.

The time of maximum eclipse is 07:06:31 UT and the annular phase will lasts over 11 min 08 sec, much longer than a total.

In Delhi, the annular eclipse will start at 11:53 AM and end at 15:11 PM, with a maximum at 1:53 PM.

The north tip of the path of annularity will touch India first at 8.801 N longitude, 76.656 E latitude, about 10 km south of Kollam and about 2 km south west of a nearby place Paravur in Kerala. Vedaranyam in Tamil Nadu will witness the last touch of the annular solar eclipse.

The safest way to view the Sun's disk is by indirect projection using pinhole cameras, created by projecting an image of the disk onto a white piece of paper or card using a pair of binoculars (with one of the lenses covered), a telescope, or another piece of cardboard with a small hole in it (about 1 mm diameter).