FOXSYLVANIA

— If you missed today’s solar eclipse that was visible across much of Asia, tough luck; there won’t be a longer one until 2132!  In parts of Asia, today’s eclipse lasted as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds, the longest since July 11th, 1991; it will not be equaled again in this century.

A solar eclipse is a celestial event historically met with a mixture of awe, excitement, and fear; in Hindu mythology, an eclipse is caused when a dragon-demon swallows the sun.   More than one soon-to-be-boiled missionary in hack writing has been saved by conjuring up knowledge of an impending eclipse to intimidate a primitive native population…

This entry was posted on July 22, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under historical perspectives, science. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: longest eclipse