Annual Solar Eclipse

An annual solar eclipse happens when the Moon covers the Sun’s center, leaving the Sun’s visible outer edges to form a “ring of fire” or annulus around the Moon.

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon’s apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun’s, blocking most of the Sun’s light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometers wide.

This eclipse is notable for the fact that the path of annularity will pass over the North Pole, the only such eclipse in the 21st century.

While the eclipse is visible primarily in northern Canada, in Greenland and in the north of Russian Far East, in the northeastern United States and Canada, the sun will be partially eclipsed at sunrise, which will be between 5 and 6 A.M. (EDT)