Solar eclipse 2012: Are you ready?

I just love this!  We have had several orbital events over the last couple of years:  Now, a rare annular eclipse, where a ‘ring of fire’ outlines the moon as it crosses the sun, will greet the United States Sunday evening and it is a good chance that we will see the full fire ring.  According to CSM, .."The last time an annular solar eclipse hovered above Los Angeles, in 1992, a “dumb cloud,” as one young skygazer said at the time, ruined the show. On Sunday, Angelenos will get another, hopefully much better, shot at witnessing at least part of a phenomenon where the face of the moon can’t quite block the sun, creating either a partial or complete halo in the sky."

So get ready, weather forecasters are calling for mostly clear skies for a paintbrush stroke of the US that runs from Oregon to northern Texas, where locals will be able to see the full ring of fire as it appears on the US continental shelf for the first time in nearly 20 years.  Californians, for their part, are being cautioned that inland areas may be better than beaches for watching the eclipse, since the regular gray clouds that roll in from the Pacific in the evening can arrive as early as 5 p.m. Depending on location, the eclipse will begin around 5:24 p.m. local time in California, peak at 6:38, with the full sun revealed again at 7:42 p.m., a few minutes before sunset.