Picture of Sunset Eclipse Over South Pacific Ocean: Hoax

Story:

South Pacific Eclipse captured over the Ocean. 2016.

Other Versions

Sunset Eclipse Over South Pacific Ocean

Analysis:

A beautiful, popular picture seen online is shared as a Sunset Eclipse Captured over the South Pacific Ocean. No, the picture purporting to show an amazing solar eclipse over an ocean horizon is not real.

The image in question started circulating online from the early months of year 2016. It is actually said to show an Annular Eclipse of the Sun in which the Moon blocks out most of the Sun, and the edge of the Sun remains visible as a bright ring around the Moon. Firstly, the bright reflection of said sunset eclipse ‘scattered’ over the surface of the ocean (not narrow as it should be) does not appear realistic. Moreover, unlike what is seen in the picture, the Sun and Moon are in fact much farther away than the Earth’s cloud cover. For example, you can see couple of pictures of Annular Solar Eclipse of May 20, 2012 on Space.com website.

The picture said to show South Pacific Eclipse captured over the Ocean in 2016 is in fact a composite image of at least two different pictures; the picture of ocean without the eclipse-sun can be seen above. The ocean picture (without the eclipse-sun) was first shared on a Flickr account of Art Lewis back in 2009 (later deleted), and has since been a popular Wallpaper on internet space. So the claim that the picture shows a Sunset Eclipse over South Pacific Ocean in 2016 is just a hoax.