Partial solar eclipse enthralls stargazers
Kolkata: A partial solar eclipse on Tuesday evening enthralled stargazers, who pointed their telescopes towards the sun to watch the celestial tango, while the faithful bathed in lakes and rivers at pilgrimage sites to mark the occasion.
The partial solar eclipse in Kolkata was viewed by students, teachers and general museum visitors from the rooftop of the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM) premises on Tuesday afternoon. The last solar eclipse of 2022 started in the afternoon at 4.52 pm and lasted for about 11 minutes.
Astronomical telescopes at Hanle in Ladakh, Nainital in Uttarakhand and several amateur and professional astronomers watched the eclipse.
A solar eclipse occurs on a new moon day when the moon comes in between the earth and the sun and when all the three objects are aligned. A partial solar eclipse will occur when the lunar disk covers the solar disk partially. Astronomy clubs set up public viewing of the eclipse at several locations across the country and even distributed special eyewear to watch the eclipse.
The partial solar eclipse was observed in several parts of the country with Srinagar witnessing the maximum obscuration of the solar disc at 55 per cent. In Delhi 43 per cent of the solar disc was covered by the shadow of the moon, Jammu (52 per cent), Bengaluru (9.9 per cent), Kochi (5.1 per cent).
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Nainital and Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune had set up live streams on YouTube from the sites of their telescopes to view the eclipse.
Thousands of devotees in various parts of the country took a holy dip in rivers and lakes. In Haridwar, devotees gathered to offer prayers at Har Ki Pauri ghat on the banks of Ganga.
In Haryana, people thronged the Brahma Sarovar, Sannihit Sarovar, Jyotisar Tirtha, Pehowa Tirtha and other sites of the Kurukshetra, the land of Mahabharata.
According to Hindu beliefs, a bath in the holy tanks at Kurukshetra during a solar eclipse is considered auspicious. Many important temples remained closed.
