Annular eclipses take place, when the moon is too far away from the earth to fully cover the sun, leading out a circular band of sunlight that gives the appearance of a “Ring Fire”.

Sirsa: The sun turned into a slender ring of fire for 30 magical seconds studied with shiny beads four minutes before noon on Sunday. Sirsa had been billed as one of the best sites for viewing India’s deepest annular solar eclipse of this country.

It didn’t disappoint the few enthusiasts who had braved the pandemic to travel here from different parts of the country. While many other parts on the 22km – Wide central line of the eclipse got clouded out in the build up to monsoon support into north India, Sirsa and a few places in North Rajasthan afforded a clear and majestic view of the astronomical event.

Annular eclipses take place, when the moon is too far away from the earth to fully cover the sun, leading out a circular band of sunlight that gives the appearance of a “Ring Fire”. Since this was a deep eclipse with the moon obscuring 98.7% of the solar disc, the ring formed was thin with numerous “Baily’s Beads”, spots of the filtering through the valleys and craters on the moon.

While Sunday’s eclipse had a very short annularly period of just of a minute, there were expectations that the event would come close to a total solar eclipse, with the possibility of even the sun’s ethereal Covid-19 becoming faintly visible were dashed.