Monday's solar eclipse is a special event, says Pembina Valley astronomy enthusiast Darren Enns. It will be the best partial eclipse since 1963, he said.
The astronomical event can be seen in southern Manitoba between 11:38am and 2:15pm, with a peak sun coverage of 74 percent happening around 1pm. Unfortunately for Canadians, the full solar eclipse can only be seen in the U.S.
"One option would be to visit Grand Island, Nebraska, about 1,100km straight south of us. That is a long way to go, with no guarantee of good weather. This total eclipse stretches from coast to coast, so there are many other possible places one might see it," said Enns.
Partial eclipses can happen about 3 to 5 times per year, but a full eclipse will only occur every 18 months somewhere on Earth.
Enns noted Manitoba's last partial eclipse occurred in 2014, where the sun was 59 percent covered by the moon. The last full eclipse that the province experienced was in 1979. He recalls skipping school to witness this event.
"I was in grade 11 and this was the only time that I intentionally played hooky and stayed home to watch, there was no way that I was going to watch something like that on TV," he said.
The last full eclipse in southern Manitoba was in 1724, according to Enns. The next one will occur a long time from now.
"This took a bit of digging, on average a full solar eclipse should occur at the same location on earth about every 400 years, but from what I can tell, for us, it will take 874 years for us to get the next one, in the year 2891."
Enns says full solar eclipses can look different. This is because of the earth, moon, and sun's distance from one another.
"The sun is about 400 times larger than the moon, but the moon is 400 times closer to the earth... during a full solar eclipse, the moon is just the right size and distance to nicely cover the sun's disk. Sometimes, the moon is a bit closer to the earth when the eclipse occurs, so instead of a full solar eclipse, we get an annular solar eclipse, where the sun's disk is not quite 100 percent covered, and we see the sun as a very bright ring behind the moon."
In the future, Enns believes there will not be any full solar eclipses.
"The moon is slowly moving away from earth in it's orbit by about 4cm a year. In about 600 million years, the moon will be smaller by distance and we'll no longer get full solar eclipses anymore," he explained.
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