A annular solar eclipse, also known as a ring of fire eclipse, will be occurring on Thursday/Friday. The eclipse will enter visibility on Friday morning May 10th local time. The eclipse will be visible to those throughout much of Australia, the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, eastern Indonesia, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
The actual ring of fire eclipse will only be visible to those along the narrow path of annularity though, the rest will see a partial eclipse instead. That path stretches from Western Australia (at about 6:30am), through Northern Australia (8:45am), to Papua New Guinea (9am), then to the Solomon Islands (10:15am), and lastly over Kiribati. Everywhere else will be a partial show (which are still awesome). Along that path, the “ring of fire” should last for about 3-5 minutes.
As far as the partial eclipse goes, Hawaii should get a good show. Because of the international date line, the eclipse will actually be visible in Hawaii on May 9th, not the 10th. The peak of the show will be at about 3:45pm local time on May 9th, or 1:45 universal time on the 10th. For further specifics on times the images on this page should help to clarify.
For more information all of this year’s spectacular astronomical events, see: Astronomy 2013, Comet ISON, Meteor Showers, Dance of the Planets, Eclipses, Supermoon, etc
To those in other regions you can still watch via the SLOOH space camera, which will begin its coverage at about 5:30 eastern time on Thursday May 9th.
A solar eclipse is the phenomena whereby the Moon moved directly in between of the Earth and the Sun, and as a result appears to either completely, or partially, block the light of the Sun. With regards to a total eclipse, almost all of the light is blocked, in an annular — ring of fire — eclipse the Moon appears smaller than the Sun, as seen from the Earth, and as a result leaves a ring of fire (the Sun).
