Nyepi – the Balinese Hindu New Year, and a public holiday for all Indonesians – coincides with the new moon of the spring equinox. In 2016 this will be a very special new moon, because it will produce one of the most spectacular things in nature: a total solar eclipse.
On Nyepi Day (Wednesday, March 9) the Earth, Moon and Sun will become perfectly aligned. The darkest part of the Moon’s shadow, which is called the umbra, will strike the surface of the Earth, tracing a delicate line thousands of kilometers long – but just 100 to 150 kilometers wide. Anyone situated somewhere along this narrow path of totality will experience a total eclipse.
“On a scale of one to 10, a total eclipse is a million,” says Fred Espenak, a former NASA astrophysicist and a leading expert on solar and lunar eclipses. “It’s completely off the charts compared to any other astronomical event.”
The umbra will touch down at sunrise in the Indian Ocean, and travel eastward. At 7:18 a.m. local time the umbra will hit the west coast of Sumatra. Seven minutes later it will reach Kalimantan; 11 minutes after that it arrives in Sulawesi. The umbra completes the overland sections of its journey a further 19 minutes later, when it leaves the east coast of North Maluku and heads out into the Pacific.
The largest city on the path of totality is Palembang, where the total eclipse will last just under two minutes. (Fun fact: Palembang also had a two-minute total eclipse during Nyepi in 1988.) Other major cities on the umbra’s route are Palangkaraya (where totality will last two and a half minutes), Balikpapan (one minute in the southern part of the city, less than that in the northern part), Palu (two minutes) and Ternate (two and a half minutes).
?Completely Off the Charts?: Indonesia Prepares for March 9 Eclipse | Jakarta Globe
