Extremely rare eclipses happen this afternoon

If you stand in Australia or Indonesia today, you will see the sun is like a fat banana because the eclipse is extremely rare, only occurs on average 73 years.

The first solar eclipse in 2014 will happen today. According to National Geographic, only people in Australia and southern Indonesia can observe this scene. If you stand in Perth, Australia, you will see the moon disc will begin to obscure the sun from 5pm GMT on April 29 (12pm on the same day as Vietnam).

A special feature of today's solar eclipse is the central area of ​​the moon shadow that will not fall on the earth, but glides above the southern hemisphere. Scientists call such events "non-central eclipses". Of the 3,956 solar eclipses recommended or going to happen between 2000 BC and 3000, non-center eclipse occurred only 68 times (1.7% equivalent). If counted from the 17th century to 29 April, it only happened 3 times.

Since most of the moon shadow does not cover the earth, the ideal location to track the central eclipse is above the green planet.Antarctica is the only place on the ground where we can see the whole "fire circle" - the part that the moon does not obscure on the solar disk. That means only penguins can admire the spectacle.

"This is an extremely unique solar eclipse ," said Bob Berman, an astronomer from the Slooh Space Camera site. The Slooh Space Camera specializes in direct reporting of astronomical phenomena on the network.