The year's first eclipse season opens on April 19 with a hybrid solar eclipse that can be seen as either an annular or a total solar eclipse, depending on where observers are located along the path of the Moon's shadow across Earth's surface. This is because Earth's curvature makes enough of a difference in the distance and apparent size of the Moon's dark silhouette to determine whether the Moon almost covers the Sun's disk as seen from the ground or completely covers it. Because the eclipse path is mostly over water, only observers aboard ships in the South Pacific Ocean will see the annular eclipse—and even then, only very, very briefly.
The more exciting total phase of the eclipse, when the Sun's outer atmosphere (corona) is visible, will be seen from the sparse bits of land that the shadow-path runs across, including Australia's North West Cape Peninsula and Barrow Island, then the tip of East Timor in Indonesia, as well as Damar Island, some of the Maluku Islands, and a narrow strip across West Papua, New Guinea. No part of this eclipse is not visible from the United States.