Skywatchers from Saudi Arabia and Oman to India and Singapore were treated to a rare “ring of fire” solar eclipse Thursday, AFP reports.
Annular eclipses occur when the Moon is not close enough to the Earth to completely obscure the Sun, leaving a thin ring of the solar disc visible.
While these types of eclipses occur every year or two, they are only visible from a narrow band of Earth each time and it can be decades before the same pattern is repeated.
Depending on weather conditions, this year’s astronomical phenomenon was set to be visible from the Middle East across southern India and Southeast Asia before ending over the northern Pacific.
The previous solar eclipse was on 2 July and was visible almost exclusively over South America.
The next total solar eclipse will be on 14 December 2020, and will be visible across parts of southern Chile and Argentina, as well as south-west Africa and Antarctica.
