Postcard from Bishkek

As the old year draws to a close, I got a bit of a surprise today when  I saw the following entry in my daily “google alert” for Kyrgyzstan:

Asian Countries Solar Eclipse 4 January 2011 Timing : Solar …
By admin
In Asia, 4 Jan 2011 Solar Eclipse will be visible in few Asian Countries like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China (In Some Regions), India (In some Regions), Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mongolia (In Some …
Buzznews Live – http://buzznewslive.com/

Of course, I had to go and have a look at the post.

It’s clear from the maps that I would have gotten a better view of the event from the UK,  but it was also clear that here in Kyrgyzstan, weather permitting, we ought to get a reasonably good view.

On the web page they gave the times at which the eclipse would be visible in different parts of Asia and the entry for Kyrgyzstan read:

4 Jan 2011 Solar Eclipse Timing in Kyrgystan – Bishkek :
Partial Eclipse begins at 14:50 hrs
Maximum Eclipse at 15:57 hrs
Partial Eclipse ends at 16:59 hrs

Apparently, those are local times which means that it will occur in the mid-afternoon here, when the sun should still be fairly high in the sky, and it looks as if the event will last for a total of two hours and end well before sunset, which should be about 5:40pm.

According to NASA it will be one of four partial solar eclipses during the year:

• January 4th – visible from much of Europe, North Africa and Central Asia.
• June 1st – visible from high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.
• July 1st - just one month later – visible from a D-shaped region in the Antarctic Ocean south of Africa.  Because the region where it will be visible is so small, remote and isolated region, it may very well turn out that nobody gets to see it.
• November 25th – the largest partial eclipse of the year, visible from high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, including southern South Africa, Antarctica, Tasmania and most of New Zealand.

To be honest, I hadn’t realised how common solar eclipses were – apparently there are between two and five each year,

It doesn’t look as if it will be a particularly striking event with only something like a quarter of the sun obscured by the moon, still, it’s clearly a date in the diary.

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The maps are taken from the blogpost at:
http://buzznewslive.com/asian-countries-solar-eclipse-4-january-2011-timing-solar-eclipse-2011/

Tags: Expat, In_the_News, Kyrgyzstan, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan