New Crop Formation in Italy.

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“A lady that lives in a house just in front of the hill where the formation appeared told me that she was awake at 4:00 AM on May 20th because of the earthquake (near Bologne). She was not able to sleep anymore because she was scared and she looked out of the window untill dawn when she saw the formation in front of her.” - Marina Sassi, Italian crop formation investigator On May 20, 2012, the date of the rare annular solar eclipse, this spiral of “spokes” in young wheat was reported in Bracciano, Forli Province, Italy, 50 miles southeast of Bologne. Image © 2012 by Giandomenico Marchi. L-R: Moon half way across sun near 7 PM Mountain in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday, May 20, 2012. By 7:33 PM Mtn, the perfect annular eclipse ring of the sun surrounded the moon for 4.5 minutes. Then the ring broke as the moon continued moving. Finally by 8:20 PM Mtn, the sun set as a red-orange “shark's tail,” before the moon had fully passed to the sun's other side. All images © 2012 by Jon Abbott. May 23, 2012 Bracciano, Italy - On May 20, 2012, between 7 to 8:20 PM Mountain, I was at Mesa del Sol on a hill over Albuquerque, New Mexico, to watch the rare and elegant annular solar eclipse. Albuquerque was right in the middle of the eclipse path and we were able to watch the full astronomical perfection as the Moon came between the Earth and the sun. The reason for the ring this time instead of the total solar eclipse surrounded by the solar corona was because the Moon's orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle. The Earth-Moon distance varies by 13 percent. So when the Moon is on the far side of its orbit, it appears slightly smaller than the Sun and therefore does not completely cover the solar disc during an annular eclipse, leaving a ring of sunlight around the Moon. The May 20, 2012, annular eclipse began in China and swept eastward across Japan and the Pacific Ocean to southern Oregon, northern California, southern Utah, Northern Arizona and central New Mexico where Albuquerque was centered in the middle of the eclipse path. Also on May 20th at 4 AM, a strong and unusually shallow earthquake struck a little north of Bologna, Italy, fracturing pavement, sending torrents of brick and rubble raining down from buildings, and killing seven people. The powerful shaking was a first for the region in centuries — and fairly surprising to seismologists. Data indicate the magnitude 6.0 was a thrust quake — the type of earthquake caused when two tectonic plates smash together — yet it occurred at a depth of only 3 miles (5 kilometers). “It is kind of surprising that it's that shallow, because it's pretty far from the plate boundary,” said Paul Caruso, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist. “Normally we expect things to get deeper as they move northward.” The next day on May 21, 2012, I received information from Australian crop circle investigator Red Collie and Italian investigator Marina Sassi about a Sunday, May 20th young wheat formation that emerged the day of the rare annular solar eclipse. The location is a hillside wheat field in the small rural community of Bracciano near the university town of Bertinoro. Both are in the province of Forli in the Emilia Romagna region about 50 miles southeast of Bologna and 15 miles west of the Adriatic Sea. The May 20, 2012, young wheat formation was discovered on a hillside in the small rural community of Bracciano near the university town of Bertinoro (center circle). Both are in the province of Forli in the Emilia Romagna region about 50 miles southeast of Bologna (top circle) and 15 miles west of the Adriatic Sea.