Monster eclipse comes 'once-in-a-lifetime'

[BURNING MAN]

THE world's most populous nations will gaze skywards on Wednesday as the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st Century lays a carpet of darkness across India and China, from Mumbai to Shanghai.

The event is being hyped in the obscure world of eclipse-chasers as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which, due to its trajectory over some of the most densely inhabited areas on Earth, could end up being the most-watched eclipse in history.

The American astrophysicist and acclaimed eclipse expert Fred Espenak has simply labelled the July 22 event "a monster".

Total solar eclipses occur when the moon comes between the Earth and the sun, completely obscuring the sun.

The excitement this time around is largely due to the unusually long duration of the instant of greatest eclipse, or "totality" - when the sun is wholly covered.

At its maximum, this will last six minutes and 39 seconds - a duration that will not be matched until the year 2132.

The up-to-258km-wide shadow cast along the "path of totality" will first make landfall on the western Indian state of Gujarat shortly before 6:30am (11am AEST).

It then races across India, blacking out the holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, squeezing between the northern and southern tips of Bangladesh and Nepal before engulfing most of Bhutan, traversing the Chinese mainland and slipping back out to sea off Shanghai.

Its next landfall is Japan's southern Ryukyu Islands, after which it curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality will occur.

In India and China, tradition views eclipses with a mixture of wonder and foreboding.

Raj Kumar Sharma, an astrologer in Mumbai, described July 22 as a "very dangerous moment in the universe," with the blocking of the sun's rays akin to a disease or virus.

"If the sun, the leader of the stars, is sick, then definitely there's going to be some bigger problems happening in the world," he said.

In ancient China, eclipses were often associated with natural disasters or the death of an emperor, and some similar superstitions persist.

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[Truthed]

Wow, Can't wait, should be amazing to see pics or video