Thursday, July 23, 2009

India Eclipsed....

It was solar eclipse day yesterday. There were mixed reactions among the people in India. Some people wanted to get a glimpse of this supposedly-long-eclipse early in the morning (around 6:30 AM). Some others felt going out at this time (during eclipse) is a big time sin, so they stayed back home. Even the maid servants who usually come early in the morning, worked overtime on previous evening to avoid coming early in the morning on eclipse day. Even some of the schools declared holiday. May be some schools did so to enable the students to view the eclipse and others to avoid ill-effects of the eclipse. But the kids had a good day off yesterday, just enjoying a totally unexpected holiday.

There were also some mails floating around on possible earth quakes to happen on July 22nd and also a threat of Tsunami. Thankfully nothing like that happened. "snopes.com" was right again, indicating these rumors as just rumors and there is no truth.

All in all, it was a disappointing day for everyone (well, for most of them). People who wanted to see the eclipse could not see, people who were expecting the Tsunamis and earth-quake, it did not happen. But, there were other bunch of happy people like me, who took advantage of this situation :-) while some people are gazing at the sun and others hiding at home, people like me took almost half the time it takes on a normal day to reach the office yesterday :-) Wish there will be many more such days in future :-)


Note from Wiki-Pedia:

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total eclipses. Total solar eclipses are nevertheless rare at any location because during each eclipse totality exists only along a narrow corridor in the relatively tiny area of the Moon's umbra.

A total solar eclipse is a spectacular natural phenomenon and many people travel to remote locations to observe one. The 1999 total eclipse in Europe helped to increase public awareness of the phenomenon, as illustrated by the number of journeys made specifically to witness the 2005 annular eclipse and the 2006 total eclipse. The recent solar eclipse of January 26, 2009 was an annular eclipse (see below), while the solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 was a total solar eclipse.

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