Santanu Saraswati
A major celestial event, the total solar eclipse, will be visible in India—91 per cent in Kolkata, and just 100 per cent in north Bengal, on July 22 this year—just ten years after.
The city last had the taste of seeing the most powerful star—the Sun, totally eclipsed on August 11, 1999—and the next to come up again just 100 years after in next millennium. A total solar eclipse such a rare event. First of all, eclipses do not occur every month during a new Moon or a full Moon. This is because the orbit of the Moon is tilted by about five degrees with respect to the Earth’s orbit, so that usually the Moon passes slightly above or below the line between the Sun and the Earth. Thus at most new and full Moons, the shadows miss their mark and no eclipse occurs. Only about every six months, during an eclipse season, are the conditions right for a lunar or solar eclipse.
Many important Indian cities, like Surat, Vadodara, Indore, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, New Delhi along with Kolkata and Darjeeling, are lined up along the Moon’s shadow path. The totality will begin soon after the sunrise in Surat. The duration of totality will increase as one move along this roughly 200 kilometres wide belt from the west to east. In 9 minutes 40 seconds the shadow will travel from Surat in Gujarat to Dibrugarh in Assam. The ‘crow fly’ distance between these two cities is 2341 kilometre.
“It means the shadow will travel at the rate of nearly four kilometre per second or 14,530 kilometre per hour. One cannot elongate the duration much by travelling on a supersonic craft; the speed of sound is just 1188 kilometre per hour. The shadow will beat him,” said director, Birla Planetarium, Kolkata, Dr. Debiprasad Duari.
Though rest of India the eclipse will be viewed as a partial event—Sun appearing like a bitten off biscuit, Kolkatans will have a more brighter view of the eclipse---and the Mountain Queen, Darjeeling, can again become the hot bed of tourists from around the globe to view a total eclipse this July.
There is one constrain, obviously, according to the director of the Birla Planetarium. July is a month of full rains. It would difficult to predict whether July 22 will have a bright sky or a rainy day at this juncture. But weather analysts inform that Kolkata and Darjeeling along with Patna and Varanasi will have a better prospect of viewing this planetary extravaganza for eclipse enthusiasts. “If one misses this eclipse and doesn’t wish to travel abroad for the next one, then this opportunity will again come 25 years later on March 20, 2034 when people can witness a total eclipse, but only in Jammu and Kashmir before the sunset.
“The Sun entering the Moon’s shadow path in Darjeeling will be at 5:30:36 hours with entering totality at 6:27:02 hour and ending at 6:29:59 hours. The duration of the Sun totally remaining in the Moon’s shadow path in Darjeeling will be 2 minutes 57 seconds. Eclipse lovers of this city will be get the glimpse of solar eclipse beginning 5:29 am with attaining 91 per cent inside the Moon’s shadow path at 6:26 hour and coming out of it at 7:31 hours,” Duari told Hindustan Times.
Experts have also observed that there is no evidence that eclipses have any physical effect on humans. However, eclipses have always been capable of producing profound psychological effects. For millennia, solar eclipses have been interpreted as portents of doom by virtually every known civilization. These have stimulated responses that run the gamut from human sacrifices to feelings of awe and bewilderment. Although there are no direct physical effects involving known forces, the consequences of the induced human psychological states have led to physical effects.
EOM
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