On June 21 India will witness a solar eclipse. The eclipse will be annular in some parts of the country, where skygazers will get an opportunity to observe the "ring of fire" during the phenomenon, an official said on Monday.
However, for most parts of the country, the eclipse will be partial.
The path of the annular solar eclipse will start near Gharsana in Rajasthan around 10:12 am and the phase of annularity will begin around 11:49 am and end at 11:50 am, Director of the M P Birla Planetarium Debi Prasad Duari said.
The ring of fire will be visible for that one minute from places such as Suratgarh and Anupgarh in Rajasthan, Sirsa, Ratia and Kurukshetra in Haryana, and Dehradun, Chamba, Chamoli and Joshimath in Uttarakhand.
In Kolkata, the partial eclipse will begin at 10:46 am and end at 2:17 pm, while the timing will be from 10:20 am to 1:48 pm in New Delhi, from 10 am to 1:27 pm in Mumbai, from 10:22 am to 1:41 pm in Chennai and between 10.13 am and 1.31 pm in Bengaluru.
On June 21, the annular eclipse will first start for the people of Congo in Africa and progress through South Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the Indian Ocean and Pakistan, before entering India over Rajasthan.
It will then move on to Tibet, China, Taiwan, before ending at the middle of the Pacific Ocean.