The annular eclipses path first begins in the south Atlantic at 06:06 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) when the moons antumbral shadow meets Earth and forms a 363-kilometer wide corridor. Travelling eastward, the shadow quickly sweeps south of the African continent, missing it by about 900 kilometres. Slowly curving to the northeast the path crosses the southern Indian Ocean. The point of greatest eclipse, with seven minutes and 54 seconds of annularity, occurs where the Indian Ocean is, about halfway between Madagascar and Australia. It takes place at 07:58:39 UTC. The path width is about 280 kilometres at this point and the sun is 73 degrees above the flat horizon formed by the open ocean. The central track continues north-east where it finally encounters land in the form of the Cocos Islands and onward to southern Sumatra and western Java in Indonesia. At 09:40 UTC, the central line duration is six minutes and 18 seconds and the sun's altitude at 25 degrees. In its final minutes, the antumbral shadow cuts across central Borneo and clips the northwestern edge of Celebes before ending just short of Mindanao, Philippines at 09:52 UTC.
The moon will take a small bite out of the sun tomorrow evening in an unusually shallow partial eclipse. The celestial event will start at 7.42pm and end at about 8.02pm as the sun sinks below the horizon, just before the 8.30pm fireworks in Darling Harbour.
Eclipse to Dazzle Skygazers Parts of Indonesia will be plunged into darkness by an annular solar eclipse on Jan. 26, astronomers said. Prime viewing locations include the province of Lampung in southern Sumatra, which will experience more than six minutes of solar annularity in the form of a ring-of-fire sunset eclipse, and the tip of Banten Province which will see five minutes of annularity. The provinces of Central Kalimantan and East Kalimantan, as well as Jakarta and Bandung, will experience a partial solar eclipse.
On Monday a few lucky people in the Indian Ocean will be treated to an annular solar eclipse, which will transform the Sun into a dark disc with a blazing ring-shaped corona around its rim. For those directly under the eclipse ground track, the Moon covers most of the Sun's surface, and a ring-like crown of solar light blazes from the edge of the disk. For those watching from the fringe of the track, the Sun is partially obscured, as if a bite has been taken out of it. The total eclipse track will run from west to east on Monday from 06:06 GMT to 09:52 GMT. It will traverse the Indian Ocean and western Indonesia before petering out just short of Mindanao, the Philippines.
A partial eclipse of the sun will be visible from South Africa on Monday, 26 January 2009, the South African Astronomical Observatory said. The eclipse would start at 7am and end about 9.30am. At 8.15am the eclipse would be at its greatest. The best view of the partial eclipse would be from Cape Town, where a 65% eclipse would be seen.