New Delhi, July 17 - A group of 10 students from various schools of the country are among the lucky few chosen to watch the 21st century's longest solar eclipse from Anqing in China, one of the best places in the world to view the spectacle July 22, apart from a village in Bihar.

The students will leave for China Saturday on an eight-day scientific expedition called 'heliodyssey' to watch the eclipse that will last for six minutes and 44 seconds, making it the longest eclipse till 2132.

The students were selected through a countrywide online examination conducted May 17 by Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), a Delhi-based organisation working to make science and astronomy popular among youngsters.

The students, a majority of them from Class 6 to 8, will be trained in various experiments and scientific procedures and will collect data related to temperature, intensity of light and humidity during the eclipse, besides studying the properties of the sun.

'There are several properties of the sun which can only be watched during a solar eclipse. The corona, which is the sun's outer atmosphere, is visible as a pearly white crown surrounding the sun only during a total solar eclipse,' SPACE president Chander Bhushan Devgun told IANS.

The students will be felicitated at the Chinese Embassy Saturday before they leave for the mega event in Anqing, a city in southwestern Anhui province. In China, they will also meet the Indian ambassador and foreign secretary designate Nirupama Rao.

Nearly 1,200 students had applied for the qualifying examination based on applied science, astronomy and logical reasoning. Of these, 61 scored above 75 percent and the top 10 won a fully sponsored trip to China.

The next 30 students will be taken to Taregana near Patna, one of the places in India that fall in the total solar eclipse belt.