Hybrid Solar Eclipse 2013: How To See Rare Celestial Sight On November 3

Hybrid Solar Eclipse 2013: How To See Rare Celestial Sight On November 3

On Sunday skywatchers will be treated to the last solar eclipse of 2013.

The Nov. 3 hybrid solar eclipse will follow a path across the Atlantic Ocean and over Africa. In North America, the eclipse will be visible only to observers on the East Coast.

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The path of the hybrid solar eclipse, via NASA.

Sunday’s eclipse is considered a hybrid because it’s essentially a mashup of two familiar types of eclipse. It will start as an annular eclipse, with the awesome “ring of fire” around the sun, before morphing into a total solar eclipse, in which the sun is totally blocked for a brief period.

The Slooh Space Camera will livestream the eclipse online as seen from Kenya, where the sun and moon will form a total solar eclipse.

A sequence of a rare hybrid solar eclipse, as photographed in the annular form with Baily’s beads all around the sun (March 2005, Panama).

On the East Coast of the U.S., the best chance of seeing the hybrid solar eclipse will be at 6:30 a.m. ET. Skywatchers near Boston and New York should expect to see themoon covering more than half the sun. Farther south, a smaller portion of sun will be obscured.

Hybrid solar eclipses are rare. Of the 11,898 solar eclipses indexed and predicted between 1999 B.C. and 3000 A.D., only 4.8 percent were considered hybrids, according to Universe Today.

Oh, and a note of caution: Remember that eye protection is required when viewing this eclipse, even though it’s just a hybrid.

Watch Slooh’s live broadcast of the hybrid solar eclipse below from 6:45 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. ET Sunday.

The Huffington Post  |  By Sara Gates