On this day in space: Dec. 29, 1777: Captain James Cook observes an annular solar eclipse

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On Dec. 29, 1777, Captain James Cook observed an annular solar eclipse.

On Dec. 29, 1777, Captain James Cook observed an annular solar eclipse.

On the morning of Dec. 29, the moon passed in front of the sun. This created what looked like a "ring of fire" in the sky, or an annular solar eclipse.

Annular solar eclipses, also known as "ring of fire" eclipses, occur when the moon passes between the Earth and sun, but at a distance too far from the Earth to completely cover the sun (a total solar eclipse) as seen from Earth's surface. When the moon passes over just a portion of the sun, it is called a partial solar eclipse.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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