The Saturday, October 14th, an annular solar eclipse will cross North, Central, and South America. It will be visible in parts of the United States, Mexico, and many countries in South and Central America, but we’ll only get a partial solar eclipse here in Beaufort, SC.
That’s good enough.
During the eclipse, the Moon will cross in front of the Sun, spending up to 5 minutes 17 seconds centered on the brilliant solar disk, but it will cover at most 90% of it. The remaining 10% will appear as a blazing “ring of fire” around the Moon’s black silhouette viewable by only the lucky ones in the western part of the U.S. Only eight U.S. states, from Oregon through Texas, will see the ‘ring of fire’.
Here in Beaufort, SC and the surrounding area, the partial eclipse will last about 3 hours and 1 minute starting on Saturday, October 14th around 11:51am. It will reach its maximum for our area at around 1:21pm and will end at 2:53pm.
During a partial solar eclipse, the Moon, the Sun and Earth don’t align in a perfectly straight line, and the Moon casts only the outer part of its shadow, the penumbra, on Earth, according to timeanddate.com. From our perspective, this looks like the Moon has taken a bite out of the Sun.
Sometimes, the Moon covers only a tiny part of the Sun’s disk. Other times a partial eclipse looks almost like a total eclipse. The size of the eclipsed area is referred to as eclipse magnitude.
But be careful. During partial and annular solar eclipses, the Sun remains dangerously bright. There’s no time during the October 14th solar eclipse when you can look directly at the Sun without eye protection, no matter where you’re viewing it from in the Lowcountry.
In 2017, South Carolina was lucky enough to experience a total solar eclipse, where the whole sun was covered in the path of totality. It’ll be coming again next year, too.
For safety tips, check out this video from the folks at EarthSky.com.
The next solar eclipse coming to Beaufort will arrive early next spring. It’ll be the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. That one will be safe to observe with the naked eye at totality. After that, there are several eclipses coming our way in the next few years.
