Eclipse to partially hide sun on Monday

By Andrew Bridges

Associated Press

A dazzling solar eclipse will be on display across a broad swath of the western United States, Mexico, Canada and Asia on Monday, with as much as 99 percent of the sun obscured by the moon in some areas.

In Snohomish County, about 50 percent of the sun will be blocked. One of the best U.S. views will be in San Diego, where as much as 75 percent of the sun will be hidden.

Other sections of the country will get a less dramatic sight. In Chicago, only 20 percent of the sun’s surface will be blocked. The Eastern Seaboard will miss the eclipse entirely because it will occur after sunset there.

The early evening event is called an annular eclipse. Because the moon will be farther from the Earth than during total eclipses, it will only partially cover the sun. It will be the last eclipse visible from the United States until 2005.

In places such as the tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, the moon will darken all but the glowing rim of the sun for about a minute, said Fred Espenak, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration astrophysicist and eclipse expert. The eclipse will begin at 5:02 p.m. PDT, with best viewing time around 6:04.

The moon’s shadow will follow an 8,700-mile path, racing eastward from Asia across the Pacific Ocean at 1,000 mph. In Asia, across the international date line, the eclipse actually will occur Tuesday.

Because it’s a partial eclipse, the sun’s light will only be dimmed.

"It’s like a light cloud passing in front of the sun," said John Mosley, an astronomer at the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles.

Mosley warned against looking directly at the sun. He recommended viewing the eclipse through commercially available solar filters, which block all but a fraction of the light. Viewers also can use binoculars, not to look through, but to safely project the sun’s image onto an index card.

A Dec. 4 total eclipse will be visible from southern Africa and Australia.