The “centrality” of a solar eclipse or how close a solar eclipse comes to crossing the central disk of the Earth is defined as its “gamma,” with 0 being a central eclipse, and 1 as the center of the Moon’s shadow passing 1 Earth radii away from central. But of course, we’ll see an end the “total solar eclipse drought” long before that, when a total solar eclipse crosses the U.S. An annular eclipse crossed the United States on May 10 th, 1994 and will next be seen from the continental U.S. A fine example of just such an eclipse occurred over Australia last year on May 10 th, 2013. An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is too distant to cover the disk of the Sun, resulting in a bright “annulus” or “ring-of-fire” eclipse. Jean Meeus and Fred Espenak note that out of 3,956 annular eclipses occurring from 2000 BCE to 3000 AD, only 68 (1.7%) are of the non-central variety. Credit: Eclipse predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC.Ī solar eclipse is termed “non-central with one limit” when the center of the Moon’s umbra or antumbra just misses the Earth and grazes it on one edge. The “footprint” of the April 29th solar eclipse.
That is, the center of the Moon’s shadow - known as the antumbra during an annular eclipse - will juuuust miss the Earth and instead pass scant kilometres above the Antarctic continent. This month’s solar eclipse is also a rarity in that it’s a non-central eclipse with one limit. 2014 has the minimum number of eclipses possible in one year, with four: two partial solars and two total lunars. This will be the second eclipse for 2014 - the first was the April 15 th total lunar eclipse - and the first solar eclipse of the year, marking the end of the first eclipse season.
Will anyone see next week’s solar eclipse? On April 29 th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica.
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