The top of the world got a sunrise special Thursday—a "ring of fire" solar eclipse.

This so-called annular eclipse began at the Canadian province of Ontario, then swept across Greenland, the North Pole and finally Siberia, as the moon passed directly in front of the sun.

An annular eclipse occurs when a new moon is around its farthest point from us and appearing smaller, and so it doesn't completely blot out the sun when it's dead center.

The upper portions of North America, Europe and Asia enjoyed a partial eclipse, at least where the skies were clear. At those locations, the moon appeared to take a bite out of the sun.

It was the first eclipse of the sun visible from North America since August 2017, when a dramatic total solar eclipse crisscrossed the U.S.

On June 1, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover kicked off the science phase of its mission by leaving the "Octavia E. Butler" landing site. Until recently, the rover has been undergoing systems tests, or commissioning, and supporting the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's month of flight tests.

During the first few weeks of this first science campaign, the mission team will drive to a low-lying scenic overlook from which the rover can survey some of the oldest geologic features in Jezero Crater, and they'll bring online the final capabilities of the rover's auto-navigation and sampling systems.

Sunlight traveling through the atmosphere becomes polarized in different ways as it is scattered by water vapor, ice, aerosols created by living organisms, dust, and other particulates.

Measuring that polarization lets scientists extrapolate what is in the atmosphere, and the next generation of polarimeters for the job could benefit from a new technology developed by researchers at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Earth scientist Kerry Meyer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is working with Harvard partners to develop a science use for their "metasurface" technology. Using one flat optical component, the technology can analyze light along four polarization directions, allowing for a full characterization of light's polarized state: intensity, linear polarization (horizontal and vertical), and circular polarization.

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".