Rare 'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse Visible from China to Texas

Rare 'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse Visible from China to Texas - Skywatchers from China to Texas are in for a rare celestial treat today when the moon blots out most of the sun to create dazzling "ring of fire" solar eclipse.

The eclipse today (May 20) is known as an annular solar eclipse and is the first of its kind to be widely visible from much of the United States since 1994. Annular eclipses only occur when the moon is at a point in its orbit that is too far from Earth to completely block the sun's disk. The result is a ring-like, or annulus, effect that will be visible to observers lucky enough to be in the path of the eclipse's shadow.

"This is going to be a great photo opportunity," said Robert Naeye, editor in chief of Sky & Telescope magazine, in a statement.

During today's solar eclipse, the moon will block up to 94 percent of the sun's disc and last about 4 1/2 minutes for skywatchers inside a 186-mile-wide (300-kilometer) track that begins at 6:36 p.m. EDT (2236 GMT) in southern China (where the local time will be May 21), crosses the northern Pacific Ocean, then makes landfall in northern California.

The eclipse's track will cross eight western U.S. states before it ends at sunset in northwestern Texas. While the "ring of fire" effect is only visible from the eclipse's primary track, wide regions around the eclipse path will get partial solar eclipse views, according to NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak. The parts of the United States to miss the partial eclipse views are on the East Coast, he explained in NASA eclipse guide.

From start to finish, the annular solar eclipse — the first solar eclipse of 2012 — will last about 3 1/2 hours and cross about 8,450 miles (13,600 km) as it moves across the Earth.

"It certainly will not become as dark as night; instead you might call it a weird 'counterfeit twilight' as the quality of the light, may become unearthly," SPACE.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao explains in a viewing guide. "A clear sky should turn deep blue and the landscape oddly silvery. The temperature may take a perceptible drop; a cool breeze may begin to blow."

And the sun and moon aren't the only objects to see in the sky during the eclipse.

"Look for Venus — it's shining east of the sun by about two fist-widths at arm's length," advises Alan MacRobert, a senior editor with Sky & Telescope magazine. "Jupiter and Mercury will be tougher. They're on the other side of the sun by about a quarter and a third as far, respectively, and they're not as bright."

Eclipse chasers around the world

Today's solar eclipse has drawn out intense interest from veteran astronomers and amateur skywatchers around the world.

Supplies of solar eclipse glasses reportedly ran low in many locations directly in the path of the eclipse and one venue – the University of Colorado at Boulder — is expecting a crowd of at least 13,000 people to fill to Folsom Field (a football stadium) for a free day of eclipse observing in what university official have billed the world's largest solar eclipse viewing party.

Astronauts may even see the solar eclipse from space, NASA officials said. The six-crew of the International Space Station may get a chance to observe the moon's shadow on Earth cast by the eclipse, they added.

Many organizations plan to offer live broadcasts of the solar eclipse. In Japan, for example, the electronics company Panasonic is staging an expedition to webcast the solar eclipse from the top of Mt. Fuji.

In the United States, several groups have mounted expeditions to observe the solar eclipse from picturesque viewing spots.

Scientists at NASA's Lunar Science Institute at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., have ventured to Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona to witness the eclipse and offer free information sessions to park visitors. Well before today's event, the U.S. National Park Service issued a national invitation to the public to watch the solar eclipse from a national park.

Today, the National Park Service will gather astronomers and park rangers at Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, N.M., from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. MDT to discuss the solar eclipse.

For a list of solar eclipse viewing times for 52 cities in the United States, see this NASA chart Espenak.

For a list of solar eclipse viewing times in Canada, Mexico and Asia, Espenak has prepared this handy chart.

Solar eclipse safety

One important thing to keep in mind when planning to observe today's solar eclipse is eye safety. The sun can cause serious eye damage if observed by the unaided eye or through an unfiltered telescope.

NEVER observe the sun directly of with telescopes or binoculars without using proper solar filters. Regular sunglasses do NOT provide adequate protection for solar eclipse observing.

Seasoned skywatchers use solar filters for telescopes or binoculars to safely view the sun. Special eclipse glasses or welder's glass No. 14 can also serve as a proper filter.

A simple way to observe the sun is to create a pinhole projector, or a pinhole camera. The most simple version can be created by punching a tiny hole in a piece of paper holding it between the sun and another shaded piece of paper. Light from a telescope or binoculars can also be projected onto a separate paper viewing.

You can also build a pinhole project from a shoebox. Staff writer Natalie Wolchover of SPACE.com's sister site Life's Little Mysteries gives you complete, easy-to-follow pinhole camera instructions in this video.

SPACE.com will be providing team coverage of today's solar eclipse:

• In San Francisco, SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall will monitor the solar eclipse from the city's Exploratorium science center.
• In Boulder, Colo., Livescience senior writer Stephanie Pappas will cover the University of Colorado's giant solar eclipse viewing party at Folsom Field.
• In Arizona, SPACE.com contributors Imelda Joson and Edwin Aguirre — veteran eclipse chasers and space photographers— are seeking out a choice observing spot of the eclipse at Horseshoe Bend near Page, Ariz. ( space.com )

READ MORE - Rare 'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse Visible from China to Texas

Tropical Storm Alberto hovers off Carolina coast

Tropical Storm Alberto hovers off Carolina coast - Tropical Storm Alberto weakened slightly off the South Carolina coast on Sunday, canceling tourist cruises, producing showers along the coast and serving as a reminder that the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season is just around the corner.

The first storm of the season that officially begins June 1 was not expected to approach landfall on the Carolinas' coast, but it prompted a tropical storm watch and forecasters warned that it could produce high winds, heavy surf, rip currents and scattered rain across the region.

"It's making the closest approach to the coastline now, so the impacts shouldn't be much different than what we are already seeing," said Jonathan Lamb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston, S.C.

 

This NOAA satellite image taken Saturday, May 19, 2012, shows tropical storm Alberto 140 miles (225 km) east of Charleston, S.C. Alberto is the first tropical storm of the season and formed Saturday off the coast of South Carolina with top winds of 45 mph (75 kph). (AP Photo/Weather Underground)

At 2 p.m. Eastern, the National Hurricane Center said Alberto was about 110 miles (177 km) south of Charleston. It has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph).

It's currently moving west-southwest at 6 mph (10 kph), but forecasters expect it to turn northeast sometime Monday.

A few rains bands from Alberto reached Hilton Head Island and Savannah, Ga., on Sunday but they moved through in less than an hour. Winds weren't expected to reach higher than 30 mph at the beaches, Lamb said. From Charleston to the north, even less of an impact was expected.

A tropical storm watch was in effect for the South Carolina coast from the Savannah River to the South Santee River. Forecasters don't expect tropical storm conditions to reach the coast, but issued the watch as a precaution because the forecast track of Alberto was still uncertain.

The hurricane center said the storm was expected to slow down through Sunday, then begin turning northeast and heading farther out to sea sometime Monday.

Alberto was named a tropical storm Saturday upon forming in the Atlantic. It was the third tropical storm to form before the official June 1 start of the hurricane season in the past 31 years.

Forecasters said there is no evidence that early-forming storms mean more tropical storms and hurricane for the rest of the season, especially with storms like Alberto that form from leftover weather fronts and low pressure systems moving off the mainland into the Atlantic.

"It's anomalous for sure, but there's really no indication this gives us any idea what the hurricane season is going to be like as a whole," Lamb said.

The brief bursts of wet weather and occasional gusty winds disrupted some vacation plans along the beaches of southern South Carolina and northern Georgia. Swimmers were warned of dangerous rip currents, although no rescues were reported. Boat operators canceled cruises both for the choppy seas and because concerned vacationers didn't want to go out with Alberto offshore.

"A lot of people are nervous about the weather, so we are getting cancelations," said Kate Myers, with Island Explorer Tours on Hilton Head.

The brief storms ended by Sunday morning and the sun was occasionally peeking through, so the captain that runs the afternoon cruise through the salt marshes hoped to take tourists on his scheduled run, Myers said.

"Having a storm out there this early is just strange," Myers said. "But it has been a weird year for weather." ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Tropical Storm Alberto hovers off Carolina coast

Mars May Be Habitable Today, Scientists Say

Mars May Be Habitable Today, Scientists Say — While Mars was likely a more hospitable place in its wetter, warmer past, the Red Planet may still be capable of supporting microbial life today, some scientists say.

Ongoing research in Mars-like places such as Antarctica and Chile's Atacama Desert shows that microbes can eke out a living in extremely cold and dry environments, several researchers stressed at "The Present-Day Habitability of Mars" conference held here at the University of California Los Angeles this month.

And not all parts of the Red Planet's surface may be arid currently — at least not all the time. Evidence is building that liquid water might flow seasonally at some Martian sites, potentially providing a haven for life as we know it.

"We certainly can't rule out the possibility that it's habitable today," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the HiRise camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

Surface water on Mars?

McEwen discussed some intriguing observations by HiRise, which suggest that briny water may flow down steep Martian slopes during the local spring and summer.

Sixteen such sites have been identified to date, mostly on the slopes of the huge Valles Marineris canyon complex, McEwen said. The tracks seem to repeat seasonally as the syrupy fluids descend along weather-worn pathways.

While the brines may originate underground, Caltech's Edwin Kite noted, there is an increasing suspicion that a process known as deliquescence — in which moisture present in the atmosphere is gathered by compounds on the ground, allowing it to become a liquid — may be responsible.

Astrobiologists are keen to learn more about these brines, for not much is known about them at the moment.

"Briny water on Mars may or may not be habitable to microbes, either from Earth or from Mars," McEwen said.

Hardy microbes

Martian life may be able to survive even in places where water doesn't seep and flow, some scientists stressed.

For example, microbes here on Earth make a living in the Atacama and the dry valleys of Antarctica, both of which are extremely cold and arid, said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Antarctic sites also receive seasonally high ultraviolet radiation doses thanks to a hole in the ozone layer that tends to develop every August through November. This provides yet another parallel to Mars, whose thin atmosphere and lack of a protective magnetic field make the planet more radiation-bombarded than Earth.

In the Antarctic dry valleys, McKay said, organisms dwell within rocks, just deep enough to be shielded from the worst of the UV but close enough to the surface to receive the benefits of photosynthesis. Something similar might be happening on Mars today, if life ever evolved there.

McKay also discussed deliquescence, which in the Atacama allows salts to gather enough water to support the existence of life.

McKay offered some advice to NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, which landed in August to determine whether Mars could ever have supported microbial life: "Watch for salt along the road!"

A possible energy source

A number of presenters spent some time talking about perchlorate, a chlorine-containing chemical that NASA's Phoenix lander spotted near the Martian north pole in 2008.

McKay and other researchers think perchlorate may be the reason that NASA's twin Viking landers didn't detect any organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — on the Red Planet back in the 1970s.

The Vikings vaporized Martian soil and looked for any organics boiling off. They found nothing but a few chlorine compounds that were attributed to contamination. But after Phoenix's perchlorate find, McKay and some other researchers performed an experiment.

They added perchlorate to some desert dirt from Chile known to contain organics. They heated the soil up and found the same chlorine compounds the Vikings did, suggesting that organics may have been present in the Vikings' samples but were broken down by the combination of heat and perchlorate.

While this backstory is interesting in its own right, perchlorate is also relevant to the possible habitability of present-day Mars.

"Perchlorate, it turns out, is a potent chemoautotrophic energy source," said Carol Stoker, also of NASA Ames, noting that the chemical could potentially sustain microbes in the dark Martian subsurface, where photosynthesis is not an option.

And some Earth microbes use perchlorate for food, so that could be happening on Mars as well, scientists have pointed out.

"The Present-Day Habitability of Mars" took place Feb. 4-5 and was co-hosted by the NASA Astrobiology institute and the UK Centre for Astrobiology.( space.com )

Blog : Playing Small

Post : Mars May Be Habitable Today, Scientists Say

READ MORE - Mars May Be Habitable Today, Scientists Say