The sun and moon aligned over the Earth in a rare astronomical event Sunday evening — an annular eclipse that dimmed the skies over parts of Asia and North America, briefly turning the sun into a blazing ring of fire.
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Eclipses of some type occur almost every year, but stargazers had not seen an annular one — shaped like a ring — on U.S. soil since 1994, and the next one is not to occur until 2023.
An annular eclipse occurs when the moon’s orbit is at its furthest point from the Earth and closer to the much larger sun. That juxtaposition allows the moon to block more than 90 percent of the sun’s rays when the two orbs slide into alignment.