2009's Solar Eclipse in Asia country's

The Solar Eclipse on 22nd july 2009

Solar eclipse seen from different places

Partial eclipse from New Delhi, India

Total eclipse from Varanasi, India

Partial eclipse from Kolkata, India

Partial eclipse from Tainan, Taiwan

Partial eclipse from Tainan, Taiwan

Solar eclipse from Anhui, China

The solar eclipse of July 22, 2009, is the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting at most 6 minutes and 39 seconds. It has caused tourist interest in eastern China, Nepal and India.

The eclipse is part of saros series 136, like the record-setting solar eclipse of July 11, 1991. The next event from this series will be on August 2, 2027. The exceptional duration is a result of the moon being near perigee, with the apparent diameter of the moon 8% larger than the sun (magnitude 1.080) and the Earth being near aphelion where the sun appears slightly smaller.

It was visible from a narrow corridor through northern Maldives, northern Pakistan and northern India, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, the northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean, including the Ryukyu Islands, Marshall Islands and Kiribati.

Toady totality it was visible in many large cities, including Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, Dinajpur, Siliguri, Tawang, Guwahati, Chengdu, Nanchong, Chongqing, Yichang, Jingzhou, Wuhan, Huanggang, Hefei, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Huzhou, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo and Shanghai, as well as over the Three Gorges Dam.
According to experts, Taregana in Bihar was the "best" place to view this event.

A partial eclipse was seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including most of Southeast Asia and north-eastern Oceania.

This solar eclipse will be the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the 21st century, and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132. Totality will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds.

Ice on Mars surface

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists working on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission are reporting what they call compelling evidence that the robot craft has found ice while digging on the Martian surface.

NASA is expected to give details on the discovery during a news conference on Friday.

The small science probe landed safely last month on a frozen desert at the Martian north pole to search for water and assess conditions for sustaining life.

Small chunks of bright material described as the size of dice have disappeared from inside a trench where they were photographed by the craft earlier this week, NASA said in a statement late on Thursday.

This has convinced scientists the chunks were ice -- frozen water -- that vaporized after digging exposed it, NASA said.

"It must be ice," said mission principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days. That is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

The presence of water on Mars is a hot topic for scientists. They have presented strong evidence in recent years of huge deposits of frozen water at the Martian poles and point to geological features that indicate that large bodies of water have flowed on the planet's surface in the distant past.

Water is a key to the question of whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, has ever existed on Mars. On Earth, water is a necessary ingredient for life.