The initial solar eclipse of 2014 made its debut in the skies early Tuesday, but don't feel too bad if you missed it; only some penguins in Antarctica got the full experience.
The only people to see the annular eclipse-- and they only got a partial view -- were in Australia and some parts of Indonesia.
As opposed to a total eclipse where the moon's shadow covers the entirely of the sun's disk, annular eclipses occur when the moon's shadow doesn't completely obscure the sun because the moon sits a little farther away from the Earth in its orbit around us, leaving a bright "ring of fire" around its shadow.
But that's only visible to those who have a chance to view the annular eclipse's full effect -- those penguins in one remote region of Antarctica again.
There are people in Antarctica, of course; scientists working at the South Pole, for example, but they missed out on the eclipse because the sun does not rise above the horizon for them in the midst of the long Antarctic winter darkness.
It Australia the event was seen as just a partial eclipse starting about 1 p.m. and peaking at 2:42 local time.
Not everyone was lucky enough to catch a glimpse, as cloud cover and rain obscured the phenomenon in much of southern Australia, although conditions cleared long enough for sky watchers in Perth in the country's west and Queensland in the east to view it.
The Slooh Community Observatory, an international collaboration of observatories and astronomers, offered a live Internet stream of the eclipse.
"This is a thoroughly bizarre eclipse," Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said beforehand.. "When Slooh brings its live feeds from Australia, and we watch in real time as the inky black hemisphere of the Moon partially obscures the Sun, the greatest thrill might be an awareness of what's occurring -- unseen by any human -- in a tiny region of Antarctica."
The eclipse was the first of two solar eclipses that will occur this year; the second will happen on Oct. 23, and will be visible in much of North America.
It follows closely on the heels of a total lunar eclipse that occurred on April 15. Another lunar eclipse, again a total one, will come on Oct. 8.
