Article Posted on : - Jun 30, 2011

Partial Solar Eclipse. A file photo.

NEW DELHI (PTI): A peculiar partial solar eclipse which will not be visible anywhere in the world except Antarctica, will take place on Friday.

The partial solar eclipse will begin at 1:23 PM IST and will end at 2:53 PM. It will reach its maximum at 2:09 PM IST.

The total duration of the celestial phenomenon is about an hour and a half.

The magnitude of the eclipse will be 0.097.

A partial solar eclipse occurs in the polar regions of the Earth when the center of the Moon's shadow misses the Earth.

The partial solar eclipse will be visible from southern latitudes and Antarctica, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) President C B Devgun told PTI.

This southern hemisphere event is visible from a D-shaped region in the Antarctic Ocean south of Africa, Arvind Paranjpye of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics said.

Such a remote and isolated path means that it may very well turn out to be the solar eclipse that nobody sees, he said.

This eclipse can be termed as bizarre as there is winter season hemisphere, the sun will be below the horizon for almost all of Antarctica, except for a small uninhabited stretch of coast due south of Madagascar.

The only place the eclipse will clear the horizon will be in a small area of the Southern Ocean, far to the south of South Africa, R C Kapoor of Indian Institute of Astro-Physics said.

Chances are that this eclipse will be witnessed only by penguins and sea birds, he said.

The partial solar eclipses taking place over the polar region, such as this one taking place over Antarctica, are peculiar in the sense that the center of the shadow of the moon just misses the Earth, Paranjpye said.

This is the third of the four partial solar eclipses in 2011, with the others occurring on January 4, June 1, and the last is on November 25, 2011.