Solar eclipse of August 1, 2008 (wikipedia link)
The Solar Eclipse that takes place on August 1, 2008, will be a total eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 1.039 that will be visible from a narrow corridor through northern Canada (Nunavut), middle of Russia, western Mongolia, and China. It belongs to the so-called midnight Sun eclipses, as it will be visible from regions experiencing Midnight sun.
In Siberia, the total eclipse zone will pass through populated places, including the “capital of Siberia” Novosibirsk, and the cities of Nizhnevartovsk, Barnaul, Biysk. Greatest eclipse duration will be reached near the town of Nadym in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Northern Siberia.
A partial eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbra, including eastern North America and most of Europe and Asia.
Scientific American - (link)
Get your pinhole cameras—and laptops—ready. This Friday, August 1, a total solar eclipse will occur as the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth for the first time in more than two years. For a few minutes, the moon will blot out the sun, casting its dark shadow over a narrow, moving strip of land and revealing the sun’s corona.
Sadly, this eerie, awe-inspiring event—known as totality—will be visible only from remote parts of the Northern Hemisphere: Starting in northern Canada, the moon’s shadow, or umbra, will glide across the Arctic into central Asia. (View the path of totality at NASA’s eclipse Web site.) “It is best to see the eclipse live,” says Paul Doherty, a senior staff scientist at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. “If you don’t want to travel,” he says, “you will wait an average of 300 years for a total solar eclipse to come to you.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t share in the experience remotely. Doherty will be part of an eclipse expedition broadcasting the eclipse live via the Web from Xinjiang Province in northwestern China, near the Mongolian border, beginning at 3:30 A.M. Eastern time through totality at 4:09 A.M.
