During an annular solar eclipse, the Moon is slightly further from Earth than during a total solar eclipse, and therefore its diameter appears slightly smaller than the Sun’s from our perspective – creating this orange “ring”.
The event is also a scientific opportunity for NASA, which wants to closely study changes in temperature and atmosphere.
In order to admire it, special certified glasses must be worn, even for those who are further from the optimal observation zone and therefore would only see a partial solar eclipse, emphasized the American space agency.
The solar eclipse was visible just after 9:00 a.m. local time (noon EST) in the US state of Oregon on the Pacific coast and crossed the United States from northwest to south until it appeared in the skies of South Texas about half an hour later.
At the same time, in Albuquerque (southwest of the USA), a large annual hot air balloon festival provided sensational images.
“It’s like a kind of black hole!” said Mubaraq Sokunbi, 8 years old. “The moon covers the sun and then there is a circle around it,” added the boy, who came to the festival with his family.
“Something indescribable”
The eclipse was then observed in Mexico and then in Central America: notably Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
The first South American country to see it was Colombia. In the Bogotá Planetarium around midday, a thousand people held their breath when the sky suddenly cleared and it became visible.
Then laughter and tears of emotion broke out.
“At first it was disturbing not being able to see her, then very moving,” Xiomara Cifuentes, a 41-year-old civil servant who came with her husband and three children, was moved to tears when she appeared, she told AFP. Children. “It will be a nice memory,” she said.
“It was something indescribable, there are no words,” said Jhoan Vinazco, a 25-year-old academic.
The “ring of fire”, which corresponds to the circumference of the sun, lasts from a few tens of seconds to more than 5 minutes, depending on the observation location.
NASA broadcast a video program on its website with live broadcasts from New Mexico and Texas.
Sounding rockets
In the United States, the event served as a dress rehearsal before a total solar eclipse scheduled for April 2024.
These two eclipses, the annular and the total, “will be absolutely breathtaking for scientific research,” said Madhulika Guhathakurta, a scientist in NASA’s Heliophysics Division.
“During a solar eclipse, there is a significant decrease in electron density in the ionosphere,” a layer of the atmosphere, she explained.
And “even though the atmospheric effects of solar eclipses have been studied for more than 50 years, many questions remain unanswered,” she emphasized. For example: “How much of the ionosphere is affected, for how long, and why is this?”
NASA had prepared to launch three sounding rockets from the White Sands military base in New Mexico: one before the eclipse, one during and a final one after the event.
The goal: to collect data about the magnetic and electric fields, the electron density and the temperature that drops due to the moon’s shadow. This could also have destabilized the animals.
In 2017, the United States experienced a total solar eclipse. After the one in April, the next one will take place in the country in 2044.
There will also be a total solar eclipse in Spain in August 2026.
The Sun is about 400 times larger than the Moon, but also 400 times further away, which is why the two stars appear similar in size from Earth.