{"id":28264,"date":"2016-09-02T02:02:39","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T02:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/eclipse-in-africa-ring-of-fire-eclipse-wows\/"},"modified":"2016-09-02T02:02:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T02:02:34","slug":"eclipse-in-africa-ring-of-fire-eclipse-wows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/eclipse-in-africa-ring-of-fire-eclipse-wows\/","title":{"rendered":"Eclipse in Africa: &#8216;Ring of Fire&#8217; eclipse wows stargazers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Stargazers in parts of Africa have been treated to a spectacular &#8220;ring of fire&#8221; in the sky as the sun was almost &#8211; but not completely &#8211; eclipsed.}<\/p>\n<p>An annular eclipse happens when the moon is farther away from the Earth than during a total eclipse.<\/p>\n<p>The result is a bright circle of sunshine surrounding a dark, shadowy core.<\/p>\n<p>The best views were seen in Tanzania, where the event lasted about three minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The eclipse could also be viewed in parts of Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion.<\/p>\n<p>The moon does not move in a perfect circle around the earth &#8211; instead, its orbit is slightly elliptical. That means the distance of the moon varies between around 225,000-252,000 miles (362,000-405,555 km).<\/p>\n<p>When the moon is farther away from the earth, it appears smaller &#8211; and does not totally cover the sun&#8217;s disc during a total eclipse. The result is also known as a &#8220;ring of fire&#8221; eclipse.<\/p>\n<p>The next eclipse is due to take place in February 2017, and can be seen from parts of South America and Africa.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-14728 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_90996398_eclipse_composite.jpg\" alt=\"This composite image shows the progress of the eclipse as seen from La Reunion\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Stargazers in parts of Africa have been treated to a spectacular &#8220;ring of fire&#8221; in the sky as the sun was almost &#8211; but not completely &#8211; eclipsed.} An annular eclipse happens when the moon is farther away from the Earth than during a total eclipse. The result is a bright circle of sunshine surrounding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28264"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28264"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}