This Saturday, Cubans were able to enjoy the annular solar eclipse, which began to be observed at around 12 noon and lasted more than three hours.
According to the Institute of Geophysics and Astronomy on its Facebook profile, this solar eclipse is the largest solar eclipse observed in the country since the solar eclipse of May 7, 1970.
An annular solar eclipse like this Saturday occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, blocking most of our star’s light from reaching the planet. The moon is the furthest away from Earth. For us on Earth, it doesn’t completely block the sun’s light, so an incredible ring of fire forms around our natural satellite.
According to NASA, these eclipses tend to be the longest, with the ring visible for even longer than ten minutes, although they generally last no longer than five or six minutes.
People in the eclipse’s “path” will witness the entire Ring of Fire effect, while people in nearby regions may witness a partial eclipse. This was true in Cuba and the Caribbean in general.
According to specialists from the Cuban scientific institution, who followed the phenomenon from the capital, the maximum was recorded at 1:34:21 p.m. with an obscuration of 68.1% (fraction of the area of the solar disk covered by the lunar disk). and ended at 3:15 p.m
The path of the solar eclipse began in the northwestern United States and continued toward the southeast of the Americas, reaching maximum visibility in the United States, Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Brazil.
Observation of this phenomenon is possible only with telescope lenses, cell phones, cameras or binoculars if they have special filters for viewing the Sun, since looking directly at the Sun during an annular eclipse, even if part of its light is blocked, leads to solar eclipses Prolonged vision can cause serious eye damage or blindness.