Longest Total Solar Eclipse of the Century

The Total Solar Eclipse on 22nd July will be visible from parts of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. What is special about this eclipse is its duration. The maximum duration of totality reaches 6 minute 38.7 second, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean southeast of Japan. It will be surpassed in duration only by the solar eclipse of 13 June, 2132!

In India the eclipse will be seen in the early morning and the duration of totality will range from 3m 14s at Surat in Gujrat to about 3m 47s at Siliguri in West Bengal.



It will be the first total solar eclipse visible from India in this century. And it will have to wait 25 years for the next total solar eclipse.

From Kolkata, a partial solar eclipse of magnitude 0.911 will be seen. That means 91.1 % of the Sun will be covered by the Moon. Here it begins at 5:28 a.m., reaches maximum eclipse at 6:26 a.m., and ends at 7:30 a.m.

For other cities in India take look at this article [pdf].

Here are some more links:

• NASA homepage for July 22, 2009 total solar eclipse
• Interactive 2009 July 22 Total Solar Eclipse map with local circumstances
• Maps animated at various geographical locations showing how the eclipsed sun appears for that city.

This month's issue of Science Reporter covers this solar eclipse with detailed information and discussions about several related topics, like geometry of eclipses, types of eclipses, shadow bands, the saros cycles, famous historical eclipses etc. It also carries an article on how to photograph a solar eclipse. There are also other excellent astronomy articles as well. They devoted this issue to astronomy to mark the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

ISS Visible in Broad Daylight

Yes, the International Space Station has become so bright, it can now be seen at daytime. Of course, you need to have the right condition for that, like a clear blue sky.



The photo was posted on SpaceWeather.

After 11 years of construction, the International Space Station has grown so large you can see it in broad daylight. "On June 13th, I was watching a red-headed woodpecker's nest when the ISS passed overhead," says Brooke O'Klatner of Charlotte, North Carolina.

You can get exact timings for flybys of ISS and other satellites from Simple Satellite Tracker or Heavens Above.

So, next time you spot a white light flying high above the sky, don't take it as a UFO! It could be just the ISS. Though, it may not be as exciting as spotting a UFO, it is still worth seeing!

Use Zemanta to Blog Smarter

Image by chucks via Flickr

The Blogger Buzz featured a post about Zemanta, a service that helps you to easily put related images, videos, links etc. in the blog post you are writing. It turned out to be very helpful. It puts a sidebar next to the post editor. After you have written a few sentences, it suggests images, videos relevant to your post. With one click you can insert them into your post.

Besides, Zemanta looks for familiar words and phrases in the post and suggests links for them. In Blogger, the links appears at the bottom of the text editor.

You can install Zemanta in several ways. They have got Firefox extension, IE plugin, and bookmarklets. The bookmarklet is of course the most easy and fast to install and use! If you want to try out, head to the Zemanta website and drag the bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar. Now, open the post editor and click the bookmarlet. And voila! All the treasures of the internet are right in front of you to use.

Zamata also works with other blogging platforms like, Wordpress, Live Journal, and the rest.

Google Provides Bengali Transliteration

Google has now added Bengali to their transliteration service along with three other Indian languages - Gujarati, Marathi and Nepali. Google already provides transliteration services for Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
Transliteration allows users to type words phonetically using an English keyboard. Such as you type 'aami' to get আমি and so on. I was very much eager to have Bengali transliteration service from Google, so that I can sometimes write in my own mother tongue. Besides the transliteration labs page, there is also a iGoogle gadget available. You can try the gadget below.



Update: Now you can use Bengali transliteration on any website. Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar.

[অ Type in Bengali]

Now when you want to enter text in Bengali on any website, click that bookmarklet. Wait until the message "Transliteration is enabled ..." is displayed. Now click on any textbox to type Bengali!

I am already using it GMail Chat.

Look here for more information and detailed instruction.

Amazing Photo of Space Shuttle Atlantis

This is not just a nice photo of the Sun. See the black dot at the lower left corner? That is no Sunspot. It is the Space Shuttle Atlantis. See the cropped image below.

A photographer in Florida has taken this amazing photo of the Space Shuttle Atlantis passing in front of the Sun. This photo is taken just before Atlantis caught up with and captured the Hubble Space Telescope for its last servicing mission. The smaller black dot is the Hubble.

Read Some Poems

My friend Bilwatosh has started a blog Mycreations and is posting beautiful poems he wrote over the years. It is in Bengali. So you all, bengali poem lovers, do visit his blog.

Here is a sample poem called "অনুভব" ("Feelings")

কল্পনার ঐ অতল তলে/
আকাশ নীলের মাঝে/
লক্ষ শিশুর মন ভেসে যায়/
সকাল-দুপুর-সাঁঝে।/
কাজ মানে তার অকাজ মাঝে/
পায় সে মনের স্ফুর্তি/
দিক ভোলানো রোদের মাঝে,/
সে মন ভোলানোর মূর্তি।/
অভ্রলেহী স্বপ্ন নিয়ে/
চেয়ে দেখে নভঃলোক/
চেয়ে দেখে রূপ,কত অপরূপ/
বিস্ময়াতুর চোখ।/
হরিত্‍ মনের বিস্তার মাঝে/
নীল আকাশের ডাক-/
ডাকে ঐ সাদা,ছোট-বড়,লাল/
দূরে মেঘেদের ঝাঁক।/
ঐ ডাকে সাড়া দিতে আজ মন/
যায় ছুটে ঐ দূরে,/
রূপের আলোকে ঝলসিত/
কার ঐ অন্তঃপুরে।

Cannot see bengali?

Last Mission to Fix Hubble

Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch on May 11, 2009. It is the fifth and last servicing mission to Hubble Space Telescope. This mission will include seven crew members. Astronauts will make five spacewalks to complete to improvements.

Image: From the left are astronauts Michael J. Massimino, Michael T. Good, both mission specialists; Gregory C. Johnson, pilot; Scott D. Altman, commander; K. Megan McArthur, John M. Grunsfeld and Andrew J. Feustel, all mission specialists. Image credit: NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and still functioning perfectly well. It now holds the record for longest continuous orbital observations. To date there has been four service missions to Hubble respectively in 1993, 1997, 1999 and 2002. This mission is called Service Mission 4 (SM4), because NASA split the previous mission SM3 into two parts, SM3A and SM3B, after the third of the six gyroscopes failed. The main objective of this mission is to deliver two new instruments, Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the enhanced Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Both instruments will improve observations of faint light from the youngest stars and galaxies.

Below is the Hubblecast video made for this special occasion.



NASA Website