Partial Solar Eclipse
March 29, 2025
On March 29, 2025, the Moon
will cover the Sun in a partial eclipse that
will be seen mostly from
Europe, the north polar region, and the northeastern part of North America. The best place
to see it from the United States would be from somewhere along the coast of Maine, although if you
could travel to New Brunswick, Canada, the views would be even better. The moment of greatest
eclipse comes right around sunrise for northeastern North America, so we can look forward to excellent
photos of the eclipsed Sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean as long as the weather cooperates.
I used screen captures from Orion's TheSky™ planetarium software for the animation, with the
location set for Portland, Maine, starting at 4:42 a.m. EST that morning (of course the Sun would be
below the horizon at that time) and ending with the Moon clear the Sun at 6:17 a.m. EST. From
the images near the middle of the sequence, you can see that the Moon appears larger than the Sun, which is indeed the case: the
lunar disk is 33'24" in diameter, while the Sun is 32'02" in diameter, so the Moon's diameter is
4.2664% lar-ger than the Sun's during this eclipse. Too bad the eclipse is not total!