See the 'ring of fire' eclipse from the comfort of your own home
NASA/Getty Images
Unless you're in the Antarctic, you won't be able to observe the full "ring of fire" eclipse in real life. But thanks to the internet, you can see the partial phases of it via a live webcast in Australia, where the view is about as good as it gets without entering penguin territory.
This is the first solar eclipse (when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, and the moon either fully or partially blocks the sun) of 2014. It's referred to as a ring of fire eclipse because the moon is almost at its farthest distance from Earth, making it too small to cover the sun all the way. Because of this, it looks as though a ring of fire (known as an "annulus") is going around the moon.
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