JEDDAH, 4 October 2005 — An annular eclipse dimmed the Kingdom yesterday as the moon passed between the sun and earth over Saudi Arabia. The event was visible over a wide swathe of the earth from eastern Greenland, Iceland, Europe (including the British Isles), through to most of Africa and southern Asia.
The eclipse began over the Atlantic Ocean at 08.41 GMT and ended in the Indian Ocean at 12.22 GMT. The point of greatest eclipse from the perspective of anyone on earth was over Lake Rudolph in northern Kenya where it lasted about four and a half minutes.
The eclipse was visible over the Kingdom at about 10 50 GMT.
The moon’s orbit around the Earth is not circular; its distance from the planet varies from about 356,000 to 407,000 kilometers (221,000 to 253,000 miles). This causes an apparent fluctuation in the size of the moon by about 13 percent.
If the moon chances to eclipse the sun on the near side of its orbit, it blocks out the sight of the sun completely resulting in a total eclipse.
But if the moon eclipses the sun on the opposite side of its orbit, the sun will not be completely obscured and a ring or “annulus” of sunlight will be seen. The effect on earth is to throw an “antumbra” or “negative shadow” on the Earth’s surface as the moon moves across the face of the sun. It is the track of the antumbra — the “path of annularity” — that was seen in the Kingdom.
