Eclipse watchers in Australia set up their equipment. Mark Kolbe/Getty Images.
There is a total eclipse of the sun today (Wednesday over much of its path), visible only from a narrow strip that begins in northern Australia and stretches across the southern Pacific. North America will miss it entirely.
Unless you watch on your computer.
Slooh, a site that offers live coverage of astronomical events, has a team in Cairns, Australia, with a live stream beginning at 3:00 p.m. EST (shortly after dawn Wednesday in Australia). You can see their coverage via Ustream and YouTube:
Slooh says the total eclipse — about two minutes long — begins over Cairns at about 3:38 p.m. EST. Before and after, if the weather cooperates, the sun appears as a crescent, with its face partly blocked by the moon’s disc. If you were on site, there would be all sorts of warnings about not looking directly into the sun — but it’s perfectly safe to look directly at your screen.
NASA has posted more information from Fred Espanek, its resident eclipse expert. As they point out, the rules of orbital mechanics dictate that there must be between two and seven solar or lunar eclipses every year, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be in a place you can reach. Typically, any given spot on the planet gets a total solar eclipse only once every 375 years.
So be patient. In the meantime, you can watch Slooh’s coverage.
Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com
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