The moon moves in front of the sun in a rare ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse as seen from Balut Island, Philippines. An annular solar eclipse occurred on December 26, 2019. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon’s apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun’s, blocking most of the Sun’s light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide. The annularity was visible in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. Population centers in the path of the annularity included Kozhikode, Coimbatore, Jaffna, Trincomalee, Sibolga, Tanjung Pinang, Batam, Singapore, Singkawang and Guam. Cities such as Doha, Madurai, Pekanbaru, Dumai, Johor Bahru and Kuching narrowly missed the annular path.

Solar coronal magnetic fields play a key role in driving the space weather conditions. Direct observations of coronal magnetic fields is challenging. Such solar eclipse events present an outstanding opportunity for the scientists to constrain the theoretical models via observations. The magnetic field structure for this annular eclipse is predicted using a combination of data-constrained models.