TULSA, OKLA. — Saturday, October 14th is the Annular Solar Eclipse. A solar eclipse is when the moon passes in front of the sun. What does annular mean? It means ring-shaped.
"The moon's apparent size is not quite large enough to completely cover the sun so what we'll have is the disk of the moon surrounded what looks like a ring of fire," said Molly Wasser, part of the NASA Planetary Science division in Washington, D.C.
In our area, we won't see the entire eclipse, only a partial one. According to the Astronomy Club of Tulsa, in the Tulsa metro, a 71% partial eclipse of the sun will occur. So what will that look like?
"A crescent moon almost. A shape that we're used to seeing with our moon but this time the moon will be blocking the sun," Wasser explained.
Since the sun will be blocked by the moon, our weather will also change some.
"The temperatures will cool a bit tomorrow. It will also get a bit dimmer during the annular eclipse," said Wasser.
During eclipses, scientists like to do experiments.
"NASA is actually launching some sounding rockets to measure the changes in the atmosphere as it cools," said Wasser.
Despite there being cloud cover in the forecast during the event, here is the viewing information:
The eclipse begins at 10:23 am, the maximum eclipse is at 11:51 am, and then it ends at 1:25 pm.
Make sure not to look at the eclipse unless you have special solar filters, such as eclipse glasses.
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