Australian star-gazers will be treated to a rare celestial spectacle from late Tuesday afternoon, as an annular solar eclipse casts its shadow across the land down under.
Perth will be the first to welcome what will be seen here as a partial eclipse at 1.17pm, followed by Adelaide (3.25pm), Hobart (3.51pm), Melbourne (3.58pm), Canberra (4.08pm), Sydney (4.14pm) and Darwin (4.21pm).
But it is Australia's southern-most state that will get the best view of the annular eclipse, which occurs when the sun is obscured by the moon, creating a "ring of fire" effect. With 72 per cent of the sun covered, Tasmanians will experience the closest to a full eclipse, Dr Brad Tucker from the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra said.
And although Australia will be one of the few places in the world where the eclipse is visible, Aussies won't quite have the box seat.
"The only place you'll be able to get a good annular solar eclipse will be in Antarctica," Monash University ARC Future Fellow Dr Michael Brown told Fairfax Media.
"To get that ring of fire, you need to have everything nicely lined up - the moon, Earth and the sun."
Dr Brown said that "it all depends where on Earth you are at the time".
"The reason we only see a partial eclipse is that we're not perfectly lined up in the centre of it - it's all to do with angles on Earth."
"In this case, the penguins in northern Antarctica will get the best view," he said.
In Australia, Melburnians are set to experience the next best view after Tasmania, unless the forecast rain and cloud interferes.
Credit to Brisbane Times
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