Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science has a public viewing event organised for the upcoming total lunar eclipse taking place on 15th June. Bring your telescopes and cameras and join in observing the event. MAAS will have telescopes setup for those who don't own one.

For more details on this eclipse, please refer to my earlier post.

Time: Wednesday, 15th June at 22:00 - Thursday, 16th June at 01:30
Location: Artificial beach, the stage area behind the restaurant Mr. Chico's.

See you there!

Mark January 15 on your calendar now because the longest annular solar eclipse we'd see for the next thousand years is set to take place on that day! Some islands of the Maldives, including Male', lie within its central track and will experience the eclipse for a lengthy 10 minutes and 45 seconds.

Here is a video of a simulation of the eclipse showing how exactly the eclipse is going to look in the Maldives. The simulation was rendered by the free and open-source planetarium software Stellarium using a custom script I wrote for Stellarium for the event. The script is up for download and can be added to your Stellarium installation by following the instructions on the Stellarium wiki.

More info:
- Eclipse information at NASA
- Article about the eclipse by the Maldives Science Society

I published a Dhivehi article over at Muraasil on the lunar eclipse to occur on the 31st of this month.

A partial lunar eclipse will occur on 31 December 2009, right before the new year rolls on, and is to be visible in the Maldives. This partial eclipse involves the Moon just barely passing through the Earth's umbral shadow and hence will be only very minor. You are likely to not notice the eclipse unless you are actively watching out for it.

The penumbral phase of the eclipse starts at 10:15 PM on 31 December 2009 and ends 2:30 AM on 1 January 2010, Maldivian time. The umbral phase, which you will see, starts 11:51 PM on 31 December 2009 and ends 12:55 AM on 1 January 2010, Maldivian time.

More details can be found at NASA's "Eclipses during 2009" page.