Sky Matters: Get ready for a partial eclipse of the sun

"Eclipses have been observed and recorded for as long as history itself. Almost every culture has associated them with impending doom of one sort or another."

Handout photo issued by Trinity College Dublin of a total eclipse of the sun taken from an aircraft out in the mid-Atlantic.

The most prominent celestial event of October will be the partial eclipse of the Sun on Oct 25 that will be easily visible from Ireland. Partial solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes in front of the Sun and obscures some, but not all of it. On this occasion the Moon takes its first bite out of the Sun at 10am, with the maximum bite occurring at 10:50 am (when the Moon obscures about 10% of the Sun). By 11:30 the whole event will be over.

Viewing a partial solar eclipse is potentially dangerous, so you must NEVER look directly at it. The safest observing method is via projection. You simply put a small hole in a piece of card and let the light from the Sun shine through onto a piece of white paper a metre or so away, and almost as if by magic – but it isn’t – an image of the Sun appears. You can experiment with the hole size to see what gives the clearest image, but something like the end of a pencil should work just fine.