Chinese photographer wins astronomy prize

Chinese photographer Shuchang Dong has won the 2021 Astronomy Photographer of the Year for an image depicting the annular solar eclipse on 21 June 2020.

The analysis of the 2019 annular solar eclipse with simple instruments for developing student worksheet

The annular solar eclipse occurred when the Earth-Moon-Sun position aligned in the same line where the angular diameter of the moon is smaller than the angular diameter of the sun due to the moon is on the farthest distance with respect to the earth. The event was observed on 26 December 2019 at Siak Regency, Province of Riau, Indonesia. Based on that event observation, the sun is gradually covered by the moon until the peak event where the sun is completely covered and showing “ring of fire”. All stages of eclipse are captured as images from DSLR camera that been attached into telescope with specific filter as well as illumination determination from observation location using lux meter during the event. This study explained how to get the information from solar eclipse images available by using image-processing software namely ImageJ so it can be used as a student worksheet. The plotting of both pixel area-time graph and illumination-time graph of this study shows a similar trend. Therefore, the data acquired in this study is obtained well so it can be used as a student worksheet in the Astronomical Position lecture based on the actual phenomenon with a simple instrument for observation.

Ionospheric Response over Nepal during the 26 December 2019 Solar Eclipse

On 26th December 2019, during morning hours, an annular solar eclipse having a magnitude of 0.96 with a 118 km wide antumbra occurred and lasted for 3 minutes and 40 seconds at the point of maximum eclipse. The partial eclipse was visible in most of Asia, parts of North/East Africa, and North/West Australia. In the context of Nepal, only the partial eclipse was visible from ~ 8:34 LT (02:51 UT) and ended at ~ 11:40 LT (05:55 UT). It was 2 hours 47 mins and 54 secs long with the maximum visible eclipse time at ~ 10:01 LT (04:16 UT). Our study is based on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements from a widely distributed Global Positioning System (GPS) network over different places of Nepal on the day of the eclipse, a day before, and a day after the eclipse. We investigated the ionospheric behavior through the changes in Total Electron Content (TEC) during the partial eclipse by using the data archived at the five different GPS stations of Nepal. The result reveals that there is significant depletion of TEC, in some cases greater than 20% compared to other normal days. Observing the values of TEC before, during, and after the event, our study showed an apparent variation during the time of the eclipse, which agrees with previous studies on ionospheric responses to the eclipse as well as theoretical assumptions.