A
solar eclipse occurs when the new moon is between the sun and the earth
and its shadow, or umbra, moves across the surface of our planet.
On Wednesday,
August 11th 1999, a total eclipse of the Sun was visible from within a
narrow corridor which traversed the Eastern Hemisphere.
The path of the Moon's umbral shadow began in the Atlantic at
sunrise, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, and made landfall in the UK
shortly after 11am local time.
It then crossed central Europe to the Black Sea, the Middle
East, and onto India -- where it ended at sunset in the Bay of Bengal.
A partial eclipse was seen within the much
broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which included northeastern North America,
all of Europe, northern Africa and the western half of Asia.
Eclipse map courtesy of Fred Espenak
- NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. For more information on solar and lunar eclipses, see
Fred Espenak's Eclipse Home Page: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html
