Partial Solar Eclipse Seen In Massachusetts Early Thursday Morning
BOSTON (CBS) - A partial solar eclipse dominated the sky in eastern Massachusetts early Thursday morning for more than an hour.
It started very slowly at 5:07 a.m. as the moon passed between the Earth and the sun. It was tough to see for awhile due to the cloud cover, but the view improved around 5:45 a.m. and lasted until about 6:30 a.m.
This was not a total solar eclipse, but instead something called an "annular eclipse." This occurs when the moon is in its first lunar phase and farther away from Earth in its orbit. Being farther away, the moon appears smaller and therefore cannot block out the entire solar disk. Instead, the moon covered the majority of the inner region of the sun, leaving just a sliver of light around the edges, giving it the name "ring of fire."
In order to see the complete "ring of fire" eclipse this time you would have had to travel north into Canada, where locations were in the direct path of the eclipse. Unfortunately, that did not include southern New England.
The view here was a partial eclipse, which looked more like the moon had taken a bite out of the sun. According to WBZ-TV meteorologist Zack Green, we saw about 73-percent of the eclipse in this area.
