TOKYO, May 21 — An annular solar eclipse was observed Monday morning over a wide area of Japan, including major cities on the Pacific coast of the Japanese archipelago such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.

The annular solar eclipse, often called "a ring of fire" eclipse, was visible on the Pacific coast side in southwestern to northeastern Japan and continued for up to five minutes.

Cloudy weather, however, meant that it could only be seen for brief intervals in most areas. In Koriyama in northeastern Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, thick cloud prevented people from viewing the rare astronomical event. (PNA/Kyodo) DCT/ssc

TOKYO, May 21 — An annular solar eclipse was observed across Japan on Monday morning, including Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.

The annular solar eclipse, also named "a ring of fire" eclipse, was visible on the Pacific coast side of southwestern to northeastern Japan, and it continued for about four to five minutes.

A partial eclipse started at 6 a.m. in Kagoshima Prefecture in southwestern Japan, according to local media. The annular solar eclipse occurred at around 7:20 a.m. and at around 7:32 a.m. in Tokyo urban area.

The solar eclipse was first seen in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan in 1987.

The next visible annular solar eclipse will be observed in Hokkaido, Japan in 2030. (PNA/Xinhua) scs/mec

By C. Lloyd T. Caliwan

MANILA, May 21 — A partial solar eclipse, a rare phenomenon, was observed in the Philippines at dawn Monday, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said.

The rare phenomenon started at 5:27 a.m. in Metro Manila.

Astronomers at PAGASA's Astronomical Observatory in Quezon City used filters to view and document the eclipse, which began to "peak" at 5:58 a.m. until 7:06 a.m.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring the image of the sun as viewed from the earth, PAGASA said.

In the Philippines, the following areas saw the partial eclipse at varying times:

Metro Manila: maximum eclipse at 5:58 a.m. that ended at 7:06 a.m.

Laoag City, Ilocos Norte: maximum eclipse at 6:02 a.m., ending at 7:12 a.m.

Tuguegarao City, Cagayan: 6:01 a.m.-7:11 a.m.

Baguio City: 6:00 a.m.-7:09 a.m.

Angeles City: 5:59 a.m.-7:07 a.m.

Puerto Princesa City: 5:55 a.m.-6:58 a.m.

Lucena City: 5:57 a.m.-7:05 a.m.

Legazpi City: 6:01 a.m.-7:11 a.m.

Cebu City: 6:01 a.m.-7:11 a.m.

Zamboanga City: 6:01 a.m.-7:11 a.m.

Jolo, Sulu: 6:01 a.m.-7:11 a.m.

Davao City: 6:01 a.m.-7:11 a.m.

The weather agency said the next solar eclipse this year will occur on June 4 and 6, and also on Nov. 14 and 28.

PAGASA said Monday's solar eclipse was seen also in China, most of Russia, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, Arctic regions and most of North America.

The Philippines only experienced a partial solar eclipse, while some parts of China, Japan and North America had an annular eclipse.

According to PAGASA, an annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon’s apparent diameter is smaller than the sun, causing the sun to look like an annulus (ring) and blocking most of the sun’s light.

An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometers wide.

Some observers have described this a "time traveling" solar eclipse which turned the familiar disk of the sun into a ring of fire for sky-watchers in parts of Asia and the U.S. West.

Like a total solar eclipse, an annular eclipse happens when the moon lines up between Earth and the sun.

In this case, the dark moon's apparent diameter was smaller than the visible disk of the sun, leaving a ring—or annulus—of fiery light around the edges.

Observers said Asia and the U.S. West won't see another such eclipse until 2023.

According to moongazers, the sun and moon aligned over the earth in a rare astronomical event – the annular eclipse that dimmed the skies over parts of Asia and North America.

This briefly turned the sun into a blazing ring of fire. (PNA)

hbc/scs/CLTC

MOSCOW, May 18 — Russia successfully sent a Cosmos- series military satellite into orbit on Thursday, spokesman of the Aerospace Defense Forces Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said.

According to Zolotukhin, the forces launched a Soyuz-U carrier rocket with the satellite Cosmos-2480 from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia and the satellite separated from the rocket at 18:13 Moscow time (1413 GMT).

"The launch was carried out to expand the cluster of Russia's military satellites in orbit," the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Zolotukhin said that Russia plans to replace all the Soyuz-U rockets by new generation of rockets, including Soyuz-2 and Angara-A3 medium-class carrier rockets.

"Today's launch of the medium-class Soyuz-U rocket from Plesetsk was the last for rockets of this type," Zolotukhin said, adding that the Soyuz-U has been in service for almost 40 years.

The first Soyuz-U rocket was launched from the Plesetsk space center on May 18, 1973. A total of 434 launches have been carried out, orbiting some 430 various satellites, Zolotukhin said. (PNA/Xinhua) DCT/RSV/mmg

ABUJA, May 18 — The Nigerian government on Thursday said the country would send astronauts to space by 2015 and launch three satellites.

Minister of Science and Technology Ita Okon Bassey Ewa announced this in Abuja at the ongoing ministerial briefing to commemorate 2012 Democracy Day and anniversary of President Goodluck Jonathan's administration. He said the move was part of government's efforts to boost the economy through space technology.

The minister enumerated the country's space program from now to 2028 when it expects to launch a made-in-Nigeria satellite into space.

"In 2015 we are preparing to launch NigeriaSAR-1 satellite. The NigeriaSAR is a security satellite with an acronym that stands for Synthetic Aperture Radar," he added.

"This satellite will have a very high resolution that can cover kilometers, and for a backup of the communication satellite there will be NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-3," Ewa told reporters.

"Also because of the experience we gained in Surrey, UK, we are going to build an Assembly Integration and Testing Center for satellite technology; it is ongoing but this year we will put in more efforts to that technology," he said.

"And before I leave office in 2015 we will send Nigerian astronauts into space," he told reporters.

The minister said by 2018 Nigeria would launch a manufactured satellite and in 2025 develop rocket and propulsion system.

Ewa enumerated the achievements of the ministry to include the launch of two low earth observation satellites, NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X as well as a communication satellite-NigComSat-1R. (PNA/Xinhua) DCT/RSV/mmg

MOSCOW, May 18 — Russia has put a Canadian communications satellite into space, the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said Friday.

Russia's Proton-M carrier rocket, with a Nimiq 6 telesat on board, blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 11:12 p.m. Moscow time (1912 GMT) Thursday, the space agency said.

Russian Khrunichev Space Research and Production Center spokesman Alexander Bobrenev told local media the research center has recorded the satellite's separation from the Briz-M upper stage.

It has reached its geostationary orbit with an apogee of 35,000 km, Bobrenev said.

According to nasaspaceflight.com, Nimiq 6 is a direct broadcast satellite built by Space System/Loral, a leading satellite developer.

The satellite has a weight of 4,500 kg and a design life of 15 years.

Equipped with 32 Ku-band transponders, it will provide direct broadcast services over Canada. (PNA/Xinhua) hbc/utb

SEOUL, May 17 — South Korea will launch a multipurpose satellite equipped with a high-resolution camera from a Japanese space center as planned, the government said Thursday.

The Arirang 3 satellite is scheduled to lift off at 1:39 a.m. Friday from the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center located south of Kyushu Island, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.

"All pre-launch preparations have moved forward as planned with the blastoff to take place as scheduled," it said.

The ministry said if the launch is successful, the satellite will separate from the rocket 16 minutes later.

It will then make initial contact with the Troll and Svalbard satellite stations located in Antarctica and Norway, respectively, before it sends signals to the Daejeon-based Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) around 3:19 a.m.

The satellite has an electro-optical camera with a resolution of around 70 centimeters that can give Seoul the ability to take precise pictures of weather front developments and the earth's surface.

The satellite is expected to stay operational for four years and can also be used to enhance national security, cope with natural disasters, better manage resources and monitor the environment.

The 980-kilogram satellite will be placed in a low orbit 685 kilometers from the earth's surface by Japan's H-IIA rocket.

The ministry said the Arirang 3, to be operated by the KARI, will be the country's first high-resolution "sub-meter" satellite.

At present, only a handful of countries in Europe and the United States have commercial satellites with such high resolution.

The government spent 286.6 billion won (US$ 245.5 million) on the satellite building project, which began in 2004.

Seoul currently has an Arirang 3 multi-purpose satellite with a one-meter resolution camera in orbit along with a Chollian geostationary communication and ocean observation unit. (PNA/Yonhap)

hbc/rsm

MOSCOW, May 17 — A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts docked with the International Space Station (ISS) early on Thursday, beginning a four-month mission aboard the orbiting complex.

A Russian Soyuz TMA-04M capsule carrying NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin docked with the ISS at 4:36 a.m. GMT as the two spacecraft sailed 400 kilometers above the border between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, Russian Mission Control said.

"Everything went off smoothly," Padalka told Mission Control.

The trio began their journey on Tuesday when they launched from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan, in Russia's first manned flight for almost five months. They were originally scheduled to blast off on March 29, but the start date was postponed due to technical problems.

The new arrivals will join fellow Expedition 31 members, Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA's Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers, who have been aboard the station for almost five months since arriving in December.

The hatches between the two spacraft will be opened around 08:00 GMT, when the vehicles will have undergone leak and pressure checks. The three will then enter the station itself.

The docking came as Acaba marks his 45th birthday, NASA said.

He had visited the ISS in March 2009 aboard the space shuttle Discovery, the U.S. space agency said.

For Padalka, it is his fourth long-duration spaceflight and his third aboard the outpost. Revin is travelling into space for the first time.

Their mission, expected to last for 126 days, will involve about a hundred experiments, a space wall and the expected arrival of the first commercial cargo craft at the ISS. (PNA/RIA Novosti) DCT/rsm

SEOUL, May 17 — South Korea is set to launch a multipurpose satellite to carry out earth observation from a space center in Japan early Friday, the government said Thursday.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said in a statement the Arirang-3 satellite is scheduled to take off at around 1:39 a.m. Friday from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in western Japan.

The satellite will be carried into orbit by Japan's H-IIA rocket, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which has organized the launch, said the liftoff will go smoothly citing favorable weather conditions, according to the ministry.

The satellite, equipped with a high-resolution optical camera, will operate at an altitude of 685 kms for the next four years to provide highly detailed images of the Earth's surface.

South Korea launched its first Earth-observatory satellite Arirang-1 in 1999, and since 2004 the country has invested heavily, spending more than 286.6 billion won (245.5 million U.S. dollars) on its satellite project. (PNA/Xinhua) hbc/utb

LOS ANGELES, May 17 — NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space telescope that for the last nine years has been surveying the cosmos in ultraviolet light, to Caltech (California Institute of Technology) which will continue operating and managing it through the support of private funders.

It is the first agreement of its kind, Caltech said Wednesday in a press release.

Caltech researchers has led GALEX's mission in the past and now has taken over the operation from NASA.

Launched in April 2003, GALEX was designed to study how galaxies change and evolve over time.

Because young, high-mass stars are especially hot, they radiate a lot of ultraviolet light, meaning that the brighter the ultraviolet light from a galaxy, the faster its stars are forming.

By observing in ultraviolet wavelengths, GALEX has been able to measure the formation rates of stars in millions of galaxies.

The telescope has helped astronomers determine how the rates of star formation in other galaxies have changed over the last 8 billion years and how that process leads to the evolution of those galaxies.

Caltech scientists will give GALEX new missions.

Having orbited Earth for nearly a decade, GALEX is no longer a young instrument which is actually an advantage, says Chris Martin, professor of physics at Caltech and the principal investigator of GALEX.

Because it is now entering the late stage of its life, Martin says, astronomers can afford to push the telescope to its limits.

Before, the team had to be extra careful not to damage its detectors by overexposing it to really bright stars. But now, he says, astronomers can be bolder in exploring the ultraviolet universe than ever before.

This means that while GALEX has mainly looked at other galaxies in the past, now it can focus on our own.

"Our number one goal is to complete the survey of the full sky and the entire Milky Way," Martin was quoted as saying.

One of the scientific goals of this survey is to help astronomers better understand the lifecycle of stars, and another goal is for GALEX to look for flashes of ultraviolet light.

The telescope will also aid in the hunt for other planets, for example, by pointing astronomers to newborn stars that may harbor alien worlds still warm from their heat-generating formation processes.

Since there are no other ultraviolet survey missions in the works, GALEX will be the one and only telescope of its kind for a while, Martin says.

Caltech's GALEX team has already begun collaborating with several groups to pursue new research avenues, the university said.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been managing the mission and built the science instrument.

In addition to Caltech and JPL, the GALEX operations team includes members from Columbia University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Orbital Sciences Corporation, and the Universal Space Network. (PNA/Xinhua) DCT/LOR/jnc