KARACHI, Oct 3: Astronomy enthusiasts had a whale of a time as they looked heavenwards at a partial annular solar eclipse on Monday. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon covers the centre of the sun but not its edges.

“The partial solar eclipse began in Karachi at around 3.25pm and ended at around 5.10pm,” said Shahid Qureshi of the Institute of Space and Planetary Astrophysics based in the University of Karachi.

He said the magnitude of the partial solar eclipse was the greatest – 16 per cent or thereabouts — in Karachi. He added that the eclipse was visible for the longest duration – around 115 minutes – in the city.

Mr Qureshi said that students and astronomy enthusiasts thronged the institute where they looked at the partial eclipse with a code refractor telescope. He added that the astronomy instrument could measure such celestial happenings with great precision.

Mr Qureshi explained that the shadow of the moon’s penumbral cone – the less dark outer part of a sunspot – first appeared at longitude 22.9 degrees west and latitude 41.1 degrees north in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Spain, and England at about 7.34 Universal Time.

“The shadow of the penumbral cone travelled across most of Europe, North and Central Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia,” he said.