Partial solar eclipse enthralls stargazers in India

A partial solar eclipse on Tuesday (25) evening enthralled stargazers, who pointed their telescopes towards the sun to watch the celestial tango, while the faithful bathed in lakes and rivers at pilgrimage sites to mark the occasion.

Astronomical telescopes at Hanle in Ladakh, Naintal in Uttarakhand and several amateur and professional astronomers watched the eclipse that began at 4:17 pm local time as the moon started covering the solar disc.

A solar eclipse occurs on a new moon day when the moon comes in between the earth and the sun and when all the three objects are aligned. A partial solar eclipse will occur when the lunar disk covers the solar disk partially.

Astronomy clubs set up public viewing of the eclipse at several locations across the country and even distributed special eyewear to watch the eclipse.

In Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath witnessed the eclipse at the Veer Bahadur Singh planetarium with a telescope and special glasses.

The partial solar eclipse was observed in several parts of the country with Srinagar witnessing the maximum obscuration of the solar disc at 55 per cent. In Delhi, 43 per cent of the solar disc was covered by the shadow of the moon, Jammu (52 per cent), Bengaluru (9.9 per cent), Kochi (5.1 per cent).

Students from the High School at Hanle in Ladakh had gathered at the Indian Astronomical Observatory located in the region to watch the eclipse, while the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research had thrown open their lawns for public viewing of the celestial phenomenon. Since the eclipse began in the evening, the ending of the celestial phenomenon was not visible as it took place after sunset.

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Naintal and Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune had set up live streams on YouTube from the sites of their telescopes to view the eclipse. Thousands of devotees in various parts of the country took a holy dip in rivers and lakes.

In Haridwar, devotees gathered to offer prayers at Har Ki Pauri ghat on the banks of Ganga. In Haryana, people thronged the Brahma Sarovar, Sannihit Sarovar, Jyotisar Tirtha, Pehowa Tirtha and other sites of the Kurukshetra, the land of Mahabharata. According to Hindu beliefs, a bath in the holy tanks at Kurukshetra during a solar eclipse is considered auspicious. Many important temples remained closed.

In Telangana, Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple in Yadagirigutta, Sri Raja Rajeshwara Swamy temple in Vemulawada, Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy Temple in Dharmapuri and Sri Gnana Saraswathi Devi temple in Basar are among those remain closed. In southern and central India, the eclipse was observed just before sunset with Nagpur experiencing the eclipse from 4:49 pm to 5:42 pm. In Bengaluru, the eclipse began at 5:12 pm and reached its maximum at 5:49 pm and ended at 5:55 pm.