2. One of the poorest and most beautiful countries is in prime position50,000 intrepid eclipse-chasers
will travel to one of the world’s poorest countries, Timor Leste, to experience the longest totality—at 76 seconds. A slice of tropical heaven, Timor boasts a Portuguese colonial influence, great seafood and coral reefs just off its beaches. The places to be in Timor will be Beaco on the southeast coast or Com on the east coast.There’s a lot of rubbish being talked about this eclipse, largely around the fact that it’s a rare hybrid type that swaps from being an annular or “ring of fire” eclipse to a total solar eclipse then back again at a couple of points in the 8,000 miles-long path.
However, that’s simply not relevant to anyone actually planning to view this eclipse. “It’s just a description of the eclipse path as it changes from total to annular or annular to total—what you see is either a total, an annular or a kind of broken annular,” said, retired NASA astrophysicist, author, photographer and eclipse expert. “It’s due primarily to the curvature of the Earth bringing that part of the path closer to the Sun.