Solar eclipse on March 20

After a longer break, we can see a solar eclipse again from Hungary on 20^th March, in the morning. The eclipse will be close to 60% so it is definitely interesting to observe and organize demonstrations to the public, website of the Hungarian Astronomer Association (MCSE), mcse.hu says.

Solar eclipse is created when our Moon is between the Earth and the Sun, and the Moon’s shadow is cast on our planet. The phenomenon can be observed only in the area of the shadow, if you are standing on earth. The size of the Moon and the Sun in the sky is nearly the same, since the Moon is 400 times smaller and is 400 times closer than the Sun, so in a favorable situation, the Moon can cover the whole sun disk.

Partial solar eclipse is visible when the Moon covers only a part of the disk. The latter can be observed during a solar eclipse from thousands of kilometers wide area of Earth. This is shown by the larger and lighter gray circle on Earth’s surface in the figure. During a total solar eclipse, Moon covers the entire solar disk. This is visible from a much smaller area than the partial eclipse; this is the smaller, darker spot in the center of the lighter grey disk in the picture. The latter is only 100-200 km in diameter, it is the totality band. Theoretically, possible maximum period of the total solar eclipse is 7.5 minutes, but so long, however, is extremely rare, mcse.hu says.

The 20 March 2015 eclipse is a total eclipse, but the totality band is far from the populated areas, in the regions of the Atlantic Ocean. The nearest land to us, where we can observe the totality is the Faroe Island. The phenomenon can be seen from the entire territory of Europe. The more west and closer we are to the band of totality, the greater the partial eclipse can be seen.

According to mcse.hu, viewing from Budapest, the eclipse begins at 9:39:32. In the middle of the phenomenon, at 10: 48: 33, the eclipse magnitude is 0.66, 58.4% of the Sun’s disk is obscured; the Sun can be seen at 40° high above the horizon. At this degree of eclipse, the amount of sunlight is noticeable reducing, although still not too obviously. The eclipse ends at 11: 59: 47 in Budapest. There is only a couple of minutes difference in other places of the country (at the Western border, the eclipse is somewhat bigger).