File:Hybrid Solar Eclipse Darkens Timor-Leste (MODIS).jpg

English: On April 19-20, 2023, an unusual eclipse swept over the Earth on a narrow path, creating fully shadowed skies in Australia, Timor-Leste, and Indonesia. In these locations, full totality first appeared as an annular eclipse, then as a total eclipse, then returned to an annular appearance. Nearby locations outside the thin path of totality (Asia, East Indies, Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand) experienced a partial solar eclipse.

This unusual eclipse is known as a “hybrid eclipse”, and they only occur a few times a century. As explained by EarthSky, this type of eclipse is so special because the full eclipse—the moment when the moon is positioned centrally in front of the sun—looks different depending on your location. This variation is caused primarily by the Earth’s curvature.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of full totality of the hybrid eclipse on April 20. The island of Timor-Leste is completely shrouded in black, which is the shadow, or the umbra, created by full totality. The umbra also covers other islands in Indonesia and much of the island of New Guinea. A bronze tone surrounds the umbra. This is the penumbra, and people looking up in these regions would experience a partial eclipse.

The image is a mosaic, acquired in two passes of the satellite. A black section, which cuts through the center of the image, separates the two swaths. Only the swath on the west shows any signs of the short-lived but dramatic hybrid eclipse.