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'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse to Cut Across the Americas, Stretching from Oregon to Brazil

Astronomer Yuri Pena shows how to use before handing out special protective glasses to observe the solar eclipse to tourists and residents in Campeche, Mexico October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero
Astronomer Yuri Pena shows how to use before handing out special protective glasses to observe the solar eclipse to tourists and residents in Campeche, Mexico October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero
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'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse to Cut Across the Americas, Stretching from Oregon to Brazil

Astronomer Yuri Pena shows how to use before handing out special protective glasses to observe the solar eclipse to tourists and residents in Campeche, Mexico October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero
Astronomer Yuri Pena shows how to use before handing out special protective glasses to observe the solar eclipse to tourists and residents in Campeche, Mexico October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero

A rare “ring of fire” eclipse of the sun cuts across the Americas on Saturday, stretching from Oregon to Brazil.
For the small towns and cities along its narrow path, there was a mix of excitement, worries about the weather and concerns they'd be overwhelmed by visitors flocking to see the celestial event, also called an annular solar eclipse.
Unlike a total solar eclipse, the moon doesn’t completely cover the sun during a ring of fire eclipse. When the moon lines up between Earth and the sun, it leaves a bright, blazing border.
Saturday’s path: Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas in the US, with a sliver of California, Arizona and Colorado. Next: Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Brazil. Much of the rest of the Western Hemisphere gets a partial eclipse.
Viewing all depends on clear skies — part of the US path could see clouds. NASA and other groups planned to livestream it.
With a chance of rain in its forecast, the small town of Reedsport near Oregon's Pacific Coast moved its eclipse festival inside so that a bounce house and games wouldn’t get soaked in the mud.
"But we’re still hoping that we might get a glimpse of it,” said city official Rosa Solano.
Weather was less of a concern in tiny Baker, Nevada, where the population hovers around 100. Inn and general store owner Liz Woolsey made T-shirts and planned a slate of activities including a drum circle and a dance party. Her seven rooms have been booked for over a year, The Associated Press reported.
“For a little place, we’re putting on a good show," said Woolsey, who became an eclipse enthusiast after seeing the 2017 total solar eclipse that swept the US from coast to coast.
Tens of thousands could get a double treat in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For the city's annual air balloon fiesta, which ends this weekend, hundreds of colorful hot air balloons lift off around dawn, hours before the eclipse briefly dims the skies.
Colombia’s Tatacoa desert was playing host to astronomers helping a group of visually impaired people experience the eclipse through raised maps and temperature changes as the moon blots out the sun.
At the Cancun Planetarium, young visitors built box projectors to indirectly and safely view the ring of fire. The ancient Maya — who called eclipses “broken sun” — may have used dark volcanic glass to protect their eyes, said archeologist Arturo Montero of Tepeyac University in Mexico City.
Towns and national parks in the path braced for a huge throngs. Officials in Oregon's Klamath County urged residents to stock up on groceries and fill their gas tanks in case traffic backs up on its two-lane highways. Utah's Bryce Canyon expected Saturday to be the park's busiest day of the year, spokesperson Peter Densmore said. Brazil's Pedra da Boca state park, known for its rocky outcrops for climbing and rappelling was also expecting crowds.
The entire eclipse — from the moment the moon starts to obscure the sun until it’s back to normal — is 2 1/2 to three hours at any given spot. The ring of fire portion lasts from three to five minutes, depending on location.
Next April, a total solar eclipse will crisscross the US in the opposite direction. That one will begin in Mexico and go from Texas to New England before ending in eastern Canada.
The next ring of fire eclipse is in October next year at the southernmost tip of South America. Antarctica gets one in 2026. It will be 2039 before another ring of fire is visible in the US, and Alaska will be the only state in its direct path.

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Astronomers Trace the Origin of Meteorites that Have Struck Earth

Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
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Astronomers Trace the Origin of Meteorites that Have Struck Earth

Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo
Reporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013. REUTERS/Andrey Tkachenko/File Photo

Meteorites - rocks that fall to Earth from space - have pelted our planet from its birth about 4.5 billion years ago to today, often causing scant damage but sometimes triggering cataclysms. But from where exactly are these space rocks coming? New research has the answer, according to Reuters.

By studying the composition of meteorites that have landed over the years and the asteroids populating our solar system, astronomers have determined that about 70% of known meteorite impacts came from just three groups of asteroids residing in our solar system's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

In total, the researchers in three different studies have now been able to account for the origins of most of the tens of thousands of known meteorites that have landed on Earth.

As part of the research, the astronomers carried out numerical simulations that enabled them to model the formation and evolution of families of asteroids orbiting the sun in the main asteroid belt.

"It is a group of asteroids which have similar orbits because they were fragments created during a collision between two asteroids," said astronomer Miroslav Brož of Charles University in Prague, lead author of two of the studies, published in the journal Nature, and Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Collisions in the main asteroid belt send rocky fragments flying haphazardly through space, with some of those eventually striking Earth.

"While more than 70,000 meteorites are known, only 6% had been clearly identified by their composition as coming from the moon, Mars, or Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the main asteroid belt. The source of the other meteorites had remained unidentified," said astronomer Michaël Marsset of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, lead author of one of the two studies published in the journal Nature.

The Massalia asteroid family, formed about 40 million years ago, accounts for a class of meteorites called L chondrites that represent 37% of known Earth meteorites, the research found. The Karin family, formed 5.8 million years ago, and the Koronis family, formed 7.6 million years ago, account for a class of meteorites called H chondrites that represent 33% of known Earth meteorites, it showed.

Another 8% of the Earth meteorites can be traced to the Flora and Nysa asteroid families in the main asteroid belt, the research found. And about 6% of the meteorites can be traced to Vesta, it showed. Previous research found that less than 1% of the meteorites came from Mars and the moon.

The researchers are still exploring the source of the remaining roughly 15% of known Earth meteorites.

Space rocks have played a role in shaping the direction of life on Earth.

The new research did not look at the source of the one that struck Earth 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs, aside from their bird descendants, and enabled mammals to become dominant. Another study published in August found that this object formed beyond Jupiter and probably migrated inward to become part of the main asteroid belt before being sent hurtling toward Earth, perhaps due to a collision.

As the dinosaur-killing impact showed, a large space rock can pose a mortal threat to life on Earth. In 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in a proof-of-principle planetary defense mission that showed that a spacecraft can change a celestial object's trajectory just enough to keep Earth safe.

Some of the meteorites that have landed on Earth can give clues about the solar system's early history. They are primordial leftovers from a time before the planets formed in a large disk of material - called the protoplanetary disk - swirling around the newborn sun.

"Chondrites are primitive meteorites that have mostly preserved their original composition since their formation in our protoplanetary disk," Marsset said.