THE JOLLY BUCCANEERS

It’s a Total Solar Eclipse in the Faroe Islands and Svalbard (Norway), and a Partial Solar Eclipse in Europe, northern and eastern Asia and northern and western Africa. The eclipse starts at 07:41 UTC and ends at 11:50 UTC.

As the eclipse plunges these places into darkness this Friday, two other rare if less spectacular celestial events will be taking place, too: a Supermoon and the Spring equinox.

A Supermoon, or perigee moon, happens when the full or new moon does its closest fly-by of the Earth, making it look bigger than it normally does. And the spring equinox refers to the time of the year when the day and night are of equal duration, mid-way between the longest and shortest days.

The solar eclipse refers to a phenomenon where the sun and moon line up, so that the latter obscures the former. And while it won’t be affected by the two other events, it is rare that the three events happen even individually.

If you want to see photos and videos:

http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2015-march-20

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/solar-eclipse-supermoon-spring-equinox-friday-will-see-three-rare-celestial-events-10111592.html

This entry was posted on March 19, 2015 at 5:33 pm and is filed under 2015, astronomy with tags rare celestial events 2015, Solar eclipse, Spring equinox, supermoon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.