Curtin University researchers have helped uncover the four billion year old story of a lunar sample brought from the moon to Earth, by the manned Apollo 17 mission more than 50 years ago.

The global research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, Canada, Sweden and Australia, aimed to analyze the ancient rock sample through a modern lens to find out its age, which crater it came from and its geological trajectory.

That modern lens was provided, in part, by both Curtin's Geoscience Atom Probe Facility and Space Science and Technology Center (SSTC) where the research team was able to use the most advanced analytical equipment to accurately date the sample and perform sophisticated numerical impact simulations to determine the source crater.

Co-author Associate Professor Katarina Miljkovic from the SSTC in Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said Curtin's involvement ensured the international team had access to world-class facilities in order to shed new light about Earth-moon origins.

"Through a truly international collaborative effort, we have connected a tiny lunar sample investigated on a microscopic scale with the moment when the moon's surface was smashed by a major impact event.

A solar eclipse will be visible over the Earth's northern hemisphere on Thursday with parts of Canada and Siberia privy to the best view of the celestial event.

The eclipse will be partial, which means the people in its shadow won't be plunged into daytime darkness.

Instead, people with the maximum visibility—and necessary protective eyewear—will have a few minutes to glimpse the moon's silhouette ringed by the sun.

In northwest Canada, northern Russia, northwest Greenland and the North Pole, the sun will be 88 percent obscured by the moon.

The eclipse will be partly visible to observers in northwest North America, parts of Europe including France and the UK, and some of northern Asia.

If skies are clear, Londoners will be able to see the moon cover 20 percent of the sun at its maximum, at 11.13am local time (10:13 GMT).

"The farther southeast people are, the less the sun will be obscured," Florent Delefie of the Paris Observatory told AFP.

He stressed that people must never look directly at the sun—even with sunglasses or from behind a cloud—warning "retinal burns can be irreversible".