An annular solar eclipse will take place on May
20, 2012 (May 21, 2012 for local time in Eastern
Hemisphere), with a magnitude of 0.9439. A solar
eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between
Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially
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, causing the sun to look like an annulus
(ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. An
annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse
over a region thousands of kilometers wide.
The annular phase will be visible from the Chinese coast, the south of Japan, and the western part of the United States and Canada. Tokyo will be on the central path. Its maximum will occur in the North Pacific, south of the Aleutian islands for 5 min and 46.3 s, and finish in the western United States.
It will be the first central eclipse of the 21st century in the continental USA, and also the first annular eclipse there since the solar eclipse of May 10, 1994 which was also the previous eclipse of this series Solar Saros 128.
