When Is The Next Solar Eclipse? - CLT Livre

When Is The Next Solar Eclipse?

When Is The Next Solar Eclipse
When is the next solar eclipse in the United States? After the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, the next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous United States will be on Aug.23, 2044.

Will there be a total solar eclipse in 2023?

April 8, 2024 – Total Solar Eclipse – On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will be visible from Texas to Maine. The path of totality will cross over 27 park units as it makes its way across Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Maine.

How often is a solar eclipse?

How often does a solar eclipse happen? – There are two to five solar eclipses each year, with a total eclipse taking place every 18 months or so. Whether you can view that eclipse depends on where you are in the world. As the Earth rotates, the Moon’s shadow on Earth (and the view of the eclipse) travels from west to east. The route of the Moon’s umbra across Earth is called the path of totality, as it is where the total eclipse will be observed © Owen Production/ Shutterstock.com

Will there be another total solar eclipse after 2024?

There are no total solar eclipses in 2025; after 2024, the next total solar eclipse won’t occur until August 12, 2026.

Will I be able to see the 2024 eclipse?

Where is the total solar eclipse? – A map of the path of totality for the total solar eclipse on Apr.8, 2024. (Image credit: GreatAmerianEclipse.com) On Apr.8, 2024, all of North America and Central America will experience a solar eclipse. For most of that region, the spectacle will be solely a partial solar eclipse, though of varying obscuration.

Only within the path of totality, which is 100 to 123 miles (162 to 200 kilometers) wide, will a totally eclipsed sun be visible. That path will stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. It will first make land in Mazatlán in Sinaloa, Mexico and cross Durango and Coahuila. Entering the U.S.

at Texas, the path of totality then moves through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland in Canada will also experience totality.

  1. As the path travels northeast the maximum duration of totality will lessen because the moon’s distance to Earth changes.
  2. At Mexico’s Pacific coast, 4 minutes 27 seconds of totality is possible.
  3. As the moon’s shadow gets larger, the point of longest totality — where viewers could see an eclipsed sun for 4 minutes 28 seconds — will occur at Nazas near Durango, Mexico.

After that point the moon’s shadow lengthens and narrows, reducing to a maximum totality of 2 minutes 52 seconds as the path exits North America at Newfoundland. To see the exact path of totality, check out this interactive map created by French eclipse expert Xavier Jubier.

Where is the best place to see the eclipse in 2026?

The town of Alcañiz, Spain, sits 50 km northeast of the centerline for the total solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, and statistically offers the best chance of clear skies on eclipse day.

What is the rarest eclipse in 2023?

When will the hybrid solar eclipse occur? – CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty The rare hybrid solar eclipse takes place on Thursday, April 20, 2023. Timing varies from skywatcher to skywatcher, as it depends on their geographical location.

What is a hybrid eclipse?

Hybrid Solar Eclipse Hybrid Solar Eclipse – Because Earth’s surface is curved, sometimes an eclipse can shift between annular and total as the Moon’s shadow moves across the globe. This is called a hybrid solar eclipse.

Does a total solar eclipse happen every 7 years?

As we admire the rarity of a total solar eclipse, many questions come to mind that not only occur to us now, but have puzzled eclipse watchers for thousands of years. Here are a few basic questions and their answers, with more on the way as we get closer to the August 21, 2017 event.

  • The rods and cones in the human retina are very sensitive to light.
  • Even a thin sliver of the sun’s disk covers thousands of these light-sensitive cells.
  • Normally during daylight conditions, the iris contracts so that only a small amount of light passes through the lens and then reaches the retina.
  • This level of indirect sunlight is perfectly OK and the eye has evolved over millions of years to safely see the daylight world under most circumstances.

The problem is that the sun’s surface is so bright that if you stare at any portion of it, no matter how small, it produces enough light to damage individual retinal cells. It takes a few seconds for this to happen, but afterwards you will see a spot as big as the solar surface you glimpsed when you look away from the sun at some other scenery.

Depending on how long you gazed at the sun and how badly the retinal cells were damaged, this spot will either fade away in time or remain permanent. You should never assume that you can look away quickly enough to avoid eye damage because every person is different in terms of their retinal sensitivity, and you do not want to risk being the one who damages their eyes just to try to look at the sun.

If you want to see what the sun looks like, use a properly-equipped telescope. Or why not just go online and view thousands of pictures taken of the sun by telescopes and NASA spacecraft! There is a misunderstanding being circulated that during a total solar eclipse when the moon has fully blocked the light from the sun, that there are still harmful ‘rays’ that can injure your eyes.

  1. This is completely false.
  2. When the bright photosphere of the sun is completely covered, only the faint light from the corona is visible, and this radiation is too weak to have any harmful effects on the human retina.
  3. The misunderstanding comes about because of using the general term ‘solar eclipse’ to describe both the total phase when the sun disk is completely blocked, and the minutes before and after totality when there is still some of the sun’s disk visible.

It is harmful to view even a sliver of the sun disk because of its intensity, and so to simply say that you should not view a solar eclipse is rather inaccurate. There is no evidence that eclipses have any physical effect on humans. However, eclipses have always been capable of producing profound psychological effects.

  1. For millennia, solar eclipses have been interpreted as portents of doom by virtually every known civilization.
  2. These have stimulated responses that run the gamut from human sacrifices to feelings of awe and bewilderment.
  3. Although there are no direct physical effects involving known forces, the consequences of the induced human psychological states have indeed led to physical effects.

Solar retinopathy is a result of too much ultraviolet light flooding the retina. In extreme cases this can cause blindness, but is so painful that it is rare for someone to be able to stare at the sun for that long. Typically, eye damage from staring at the sun results in blurred vision, dark or yellow spots, pain in bright light or loss of vision in the center of the eye (the fovea).

Permanent damage to the retina has been shown to occur in ~100 seconds, but the exact time before damage occurs will vary with the intensity of the sun on a particular day and with how much the viewer’s pupil is dilated from decongestants and other drugs they may be taking. Even when 99% of the Sun’s surface (the photosphere) is obscured during the partial phases of a solar eclipse, the remaining crescent Sun is still intense enough to cause a retinal burn.

Note, there are no pain receptors in the retina so your retina can be damaged even before you realize it, and by then it is too late to save your vision! Many people will obtain eclipse viewing glasses. To date three manufacturers have certified that their eclipse glasses and hand-held solar viewers meet the ISO 12312-2 international standard for such products: Rainbow Symphony, American Paper Optics, and Thousand Oaks Optical.

  • These companies may be found online and the glasses ordered, but you really need to order your glasses many months in advance because of the anticipated huge audience that could number in the hundreds of millions.
  • Also, NASA is partnering with GOOGLE and making arrangements to distribute viewing glasses to many institutions and groups along the path of totality.

If you are a photographer or amateur astronomer, you will want professional-grade solar filters to cover your binoculars, telescope or camera. Companies like Thousand Oaks Optical and others you can find by using the keyword ‘Solar filters’ have these filters for sale, but again due to the large number of likely customers along the path of totality, you need to order your filter many months in advance.

  • Do not wait until June, 2017 to get your filter.
  • You will also need some time to learn how to use the filter with your optical system, and if you are photographing the eclipse, take lots of test shots to get the right solar disk size and sharpness.
  • Actually, although filters and glasses do safely block the intense sunlight that is known to damage retinas, the infrared ‘heat’ from the sun can also make viewing uncomfortable as it literally warms the eye.

This is why staring at the sun for minutes at a time even with proper filters can still over-heat the tissues and fluids in the eye, and the consequences of this heating can be dangerous as well. To avoid this problem before totality takes place, try not to use your filters without frequently looking-away to cool your eyes.

  • During totality, there is no adverse heating of the eyeball since the solar disk is not visible.
  • Absolutely not! Everyone needs to be reminded that eyes never evolved on Earth to look at the sun without suffering severe damage.
  • We have many built-in reflexes to prevent this.
  • There are no higher organisms on this planet that can do so and not run an enormous risk of being blinded.

Most of the time, astronomers are anxious for you to look at the sky and deeply enjoy the sights that you see. There is never a disclaimer that this is dangerous. The ONLY exception is in viewing solar eclipses. It is an inherently dangerous activity that you have to do very carefully in order not to suffer eye damage. Eclipses occur due to the special coincidence of the moon and the Sun being the same angular size. The Sun is 400 times wider than the moon, but it is also 400 times farther away, so they coincidentally appear to be the same size in our sky. This is what allows us the phenomenal beauty of the total solar eclipse.

Note: You can give the audience the experience of the change in apparent size of an object close by and the same object farther away. They can use their hands to measure angular size.) Because the geometry required for a total solar eclipse has nothing to do with local noon. It has to do with when the lunar shadow sweeps across your location during the time when the Sun is above the horizon.

Even so, it is certainly possible for the Sun to be in full eclipse before it rises at your particular location. Eclipses only occur if the Moon is located within 0.5 degrees of the plane of the ecliptic, on a line that passes through the center of the Sun and the Earth.

  • The Moon travels along an orbit that is inclined by 5 degrees to the ecliptic plane, so there are only two opportunities each month when it passes through the plane of the ecliptic.
  • These points are called the ascending and descending nodes.
  • Eclipses of the Sun only occur if new moon occurs when the Moon is near of one of these nodes.

A similar argument explains why lunar eclipses do not occur every full moon at the node opposite the Sun from the Earth. King Henry I of England, the son of William the Conqueror, died in 1133 CE. This event coincided with a total solar eclipse that lasted over four minutes on August 2,

Historian William of Malmesbury recounts this “hideous darkness agitated the hearts of men”. After King Henry’s death, a struggle for the throne threw the kingdom into chaos and civil war. Historians and astronomers believe that the legendary eclipse that two Chinese astrologers Hsi and Ho failed to forecast occurred on October 22, 2134 B.C.E, making it the oldest solar eclipse ever recorded in human history.

The Babylonian eclipse on May 3, 1375 BCE is the oldest successfully predicted and recorded in the western world, and there is evidence that the Babylonians knew about the Saros Cycle (18 years 11 days) and could use it to predict the approximate years of eclipses.

  1. Other than watch it with your family and friends, you may want to create a time capsule, which you would open on April 8, 2024 when the next total solar eclipse occurs over the continental United States.
  2. You might want to write a letter to your older self and describe what you think you might be doing in 2024, or include some of your favorite items, or a copy of your daily newspaper.

Nearly all public schools will not be in session, so there will be few formal education events involving your students. However, before the current 2016-2017 school year ends, you should check with your science teachers to see if they might have some ideas for summer projects involving the eclipse.

For educators, it is highly recommended that you alert your students to this event when school closes in May-June, and equip your students with an Eclipse Project along with your planned summer work activities. This eclipse will occur in the week before school begins in 2017-2018 and will be an excellent talking point to start your school year in many subjects such as art, English and of course science and math.

The only requirement for a total solar eclipse is that the angular size of the sun has to match the angular size of some other object that passes in front of it. When the disk of the object is smaller than the sun, this is called a transit. It is also called an eclipse when the disk of the object is much larger than the sun, but in general this would not allow the corona to be viewed, which is how we define total solar eclipses viewed from Earth.

When humans were rooted to the surface of Earth, this was only the case for the moon as the eclipsing object. But there are many known moons and asteroids across our solar system, and from a suitable vantage point near any of them, we can find a distance where again the angular size of the object matches that of the sun to form a total solar eclipse.

There are so many different vantage points to choose from that each case has to be specified. For example, eclipses need not be observed from the surfaces of a planet. In fact, Venus and the outer planets have inaccessible surfaces. Instead, we might consider standing on the surface of a planetary moon and waiting for another moon to pass in front of the sun.

  • Given the myriad of planetary moon orbits, finding those instances where the angular sizes match is a significant computational challenge.
  • Jupiter frequently passes across the sun as viewed from its moons, but its diameter is huge compared to the sun.
  • There are 5 satellites capable of completely occulting the Sun: Amalthea, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

All of the others are too small or too distant to be able to completely occult the Sun, so can only transit the Sun. UT or “Universal Time” is a single time standard that applies to all locations on Earth as opposed to your local time which will vary depending on your location (longitude).

For all practical purposes, UT is equivalent to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) which establishes a line of longitude that passes through Greenwich England (called the Prime Meridian) as the standard from which all other times are measured and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is based on International Atomic Time (time measured very precisely as vibrations of a cesium atom).

The following chart may be used to convert UT to your US time zone during the eclipse. Example: 18:23 UT = 12:23pm MDT The totality only lasts a few very brief minutes and it may be the only such event you ever get to see in your life, so please make sure that you are not so distracted with projects that you miss the event! That said, many people try to photograph the eclipse, which requires lots of pre-planning before the event and sometimes involves specialized equipment.

  • Other simple projects can involve measuring temperature, daylight and animal behavior changes in your immediate area.
  • These supplementary activities are simple to perform and require a minimum of distraction from your personal enjoyment of the event! You will need to purchase a solar filter that will reduce the brightness of the sun so that the light intensity does not destroy your camera.

If you ONLY take a photo at the moment of totality, you will not need this filter, and will be rewarded by being able to photograph the faint corona, which will not be visible if you have the filter in place. Most digital cameras with telephoto lenses of 100 mm or larger will show a disk for the eclipse that will show some detail.

As a trial, photograph the full moon at night. It will be the same diameter as the total eclipse, so you can practice on the moon first to get the right telephoto lens combination. There are many places on the internet where you can get detailed information such as Mr. Eclipse http://www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/SEphoto.html It has been reported during many eclipses that many different animals are startled by totality and change their behavior thinking that twilight has arrived.

You can explore this yourself with your own pets, or by watching local wildlife, especially birds. These are among the most ephemeral phenomena that observers see during the few minutes before and after a total solar eclipse. They appear as a multitude of faint rapidly moving bands that can be seen by placing a white sheet of paper several feet square on the ground.

They look like ripples of sunshine at the bottom of a swimming pool, and their visibility varies from eclipse to eclipse.19th century observers interpreted them as interference fringes caused by some kind of diffraction phenomenon. The Sun, however, is hardly a “point source” and the patterns are more random than you might expect from diffraction effects.

The simplest explanation is that they arise from atmospheric turbulence. When light rays pass through eddies in the atmosphere, they are refracted. Unresolved distant sources simply “twinkle,” but for nearby large objects, the incoming light can be split into interfering bundles that recombine on the ground to give mottled patterns of light and dark bands, or portions of bands.

  1. Near totality, the image of the Sun is only a thin crescent a few arc seconds wide, which is about the same size as the atmospheric eddies as seen from the ground.
  2. Bands are produced because the Sun’s image is longer in one direction than another.
  3. The bands move, not at the rate you would expect for the eclipse, but at a speed determined by the motion of the atmospheric eddies.

It would probably be equal to the typical daytime minus nighttime temperature difference at that time of year and location on the Earth. It would be modified a bit by the fact that it only lasts a few minutes, which means the environment would not have had much time to thermally respond to its lowest temperature, so it would probably only be 3/4 or 1/2 the maximum day-night temperature difference.

Because the patch of the shadow travels faster than the speed of sound, weather systems will only be affected very locally directly under the instantaneous footprint of the eclipse. The main effect is in the “radiant heating” component which goes away suddenly at the moment of eclipse and produces a very fast temperature decrease.

If the wind is blowing, your body probably exaggerates, by evaporative cooling, how large the actual temperature swing actually is. The short answer is a definite ‘yes!’, but of course you have to be careful that you minimize glimpsing the bright sun with your eyes without the benefit of a proper filter.

As for your camera, there is no valid reason why you would want to point your smartphone camera at the brilliant, un-eclipsed sun without putting a filter over the lens. During totality, you do not need the filter, of course! Unless you have a telephoto lens for your smartphone, you will only be able to take unmagnified images of the eclipse in your sky.

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These photos can be very exciting because the field-of-view is large enough that you can compose the shot with your friends and local scenery in the shot, at the same time a recognizable, eclipsed sun during totality hangs dramatically in the darkened sky.

  • You will easily be able to capture with most smartphone cameras the darkened disk of the moon surrounded by a clearly recognizable bright solar corona.
  • Many examples of these kinds of wide-angle shots can be found on the Internet.
  • Of course, if you use the camera’s digital zoom, you will see a pixelized, enlarged image that will not show much actual detail in the corona.

To get around this, you need a telephoto lens for your smartphone. There are many styles of telephoto lenses for smartphones. Avoid the ‘clip on’ lenses because they constantly slip and have to be precisely lined up on the camera lens to work. They are often of low optical quality.

  1. The best lenses are rated as 12x and above, and come with their own smartphone mounting bracket.
  2. At these magnifications, a tripod is essential because of camera jitter.
  3. A decent 12x lens and tripod adapter will cost you about $30.00, but you can also use this system for great ‘close up’ shots in sport and nature settings too! The telephoto lens will give you enough magnification that you will clearly see some of the details in the bright corona.

You should test your system by taking night-time photos of the moon so you understand how large and detailed the moon will appear in your shot. The sun/mon during eclipse are equal-sized so this is a good way to compose your eclipse shots too. Also experiment with the settings on your camera using a downloadable app like Camera+ or NightCap Pro, which allow you more flexibility in setting up the exposure, f/stop and other factors.

  1. For more information on eclipse photography with smartphones, read the project details found at our Citizen Explorers page.
  2. Above all, don’t forget to put your smartphone down and enjoy the eclipse with your own eyes! Wellno.
  3. As you get close to totality, you should be able to notice a power drop in the output of your panels, which will reach a minimum when the sun is in full eclipse, and then your power levels will recover as the moon moves away from the sun.

In fact, this may be a fun science project if you can get in touch with many people in other cities that also have solar panels they can monitor. Just like some folks will be watching for temperature changes and the dimming of sunlight during the eclipse, you can measure the drop in solar power reaching Earth’s surface as a companion observation! Go for it!! The next total solar eclipse visible from the United States occurs on August 21, 2017. The track goes from Oregon at its start, and exits on the east coast near South Carolina. After that, the next one visible from the Lower-48 will be on April 8, 2024 which will track northeast from Texas to Maine and cross the path of the 2017 eclipse near Carbondale, Illinois.

  1. Since 1503, there have been 15 total solar eclipse paths that have crossed the path of the August 2017 eclipse.
  2. Calculations show that it will take about 1000 years for every geographic location in the Lower-48 to be able to view a total solar eclipse.
  3. The last total solar eclipse viewed from contiguous United States was on Feb.26, 1979 whose path passed through the northwestern U.S.

states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. After the August 2017 total solar eclipse, the next annular solar eclipse that can be seen in the continental United States will be on October 14, 2023 which will be visible from Northern California to Florida.

  • Following this, we will have a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 visible from Texas to Maine.
  • The Babylonians knew how to predict lunar eclipses with some accuracy, but solar eclipses are far more difficult because the ‘footprint’ on the Earth is only a few tens of miles across and requires arc minute positional accuracy and forecasting for any specific locale.

Apparently Thales, c.610 B.C. E, is credited with predicting a solar eclipse from knowledge of a previous eclipse and using the Saros cycle. He predicted the year, but not the month and the day. It wasn’t until Ptolemy’s time that solar eclipse forecasting became more accurate.

Appalachian Trail (TN, SC, GA) Blue Ridge Parkway (TN, NC) Craters of the Moon (ID) John Day Fossil Beds (OR) Grand Teton National Park (WY) Fort Laramie National Historic Site (WY) Scott’s Bluff NM (NE) Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (NE) Homestead National Monument of America (NE) Harry S Truman National Historic Site (MO) Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site (MO) Stones River (TN) Obed WSR (TN) Great Smoky Mountains National Park (TN) Ninety Six National Historic Site (SC) Congaree National Park (SC) Charles Pinckney National Historic Site (SC) Fort Sumter National Monument (SC) Mammoth Cave National Park (KY) Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail (Omaha) Fort Donelson National Battlefield (TN) Manhattan Project National Historic Park (TN)

Including Alaska, Hawaii and the Lower-48, here are the total solar eclipses visible during this period and what was going on at those times: July 11, 1991 – (Hawaii) Most popular song: ‘I Do it for You’ by Bryan Adams was the top song. Popular movie.’Terminator 2 ‘.

Price of gasoline: $1.14. Stock Market: 3000. President in office: George H.W. Bush. Major current event: Nigeria Airways DC-8 crashes at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing all 261 passengers and crew on board. Major scientific event this year: First website goes online at CERN(August); Dinosaur extinction attributed to asteroid impact in Yucatan.

July 10, 1972 – (Alaska) Most popular song: “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers was the top song. Popular movie. ‘Deliverance’. Price of gasoline: $1.59. Stock Market: 930. President in office: Richard Nixon. Major current event: Chess match between world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, and United States champion Bobby Fischer, in Iceland.

  • Major scientific event this year: The Soviet space probe Venera 8 landed on Venus in July.
  • Mariner 9 sends pictures from Mars in February.
  • Apollo 16 launched in April.
  • First scientific hand-held calculator on sale.
  • February 26, 1979 – (Lower-48) Most popular song: Le Freak by Chic was the top song.
  • Popular movie The Deer Hunter.

Price of gasoline: $0.86. Stock Market: 821. President in office: Jimmy Carter. Major current event: Ayatolla Khomaini seizes power in Iran. Major scientific event this year: WHO certifies global eradication of smallpox. March 7, 1970 – (Lower-48) Most popular song: Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel.

  • Popular movie – Patton.
  • Price of gasoline: $0.36.
  • Stock Market: 784.
  • President in office: Richard Nixon.
  • Major current event: First Boeing 747 flies.
  • US lowers voting age from 21 to 18.
  • Major scientific event this year: Venera 7 becomes first spacecraft to reach surface of Venus.
  • July 20, 1963 – (Alaska, Maine) Most popular song: Surf City by Jan and Dean.

Popular movie – Cleopatra. Price of gasoline: $0.30. Stock Market: 694. President in office: John Kennedy. Major current event: ZIP codes introduced in the US. Major scientific event this year: British geophysicists publish proof of seafloor spreading on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

  • According to a map in which the tracks of all total solar eclipses from 1000 to 2000 BCE have been overlain, there are two such areas; one in north eastern Colorado centered on Fort Morgan, and one in Nebraska centered near Lewellen, that have not seen a total solar eclipse in over 1000 years.
  • Each area is about 50 km across.

There will literally be thousands of different venues to choose from across the continental United States. Some will offer lectures about eclipses, safe locations for viewing, proper viewing glasses, and many may host a variety of podcasts and other social media opportunities.

  • Some of these will be featured on the NASA Eclipse 2017 website and/or on our Eclipse Megacast, which will be live-streaming webcast.
  • Because most locations will not have schools in session, your local museum will likely have a schedule of planned events to choose from.
  • Also check out your local amateur astronomer club, which will be especially active and will likely offer safe telescopic observing of the event.

Total solar eclipses have, indeed, been a popular theme. We have a short list of these examples on our webpage at http://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipses-and-music The most famous example is Carly Simon’s ‘You’re so Vain ‘ where she sings ‘. you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia To see a total eclipse of the sun’.

  1. Her lyric refers to the March 7, 1970 total solar eclipse, and this is the only known recorded song that mentions a specific eclipse.
  2. This will make future historians very happy if they try to date when the song was written if no other records exist.
  3. This is kind of like what archaeologists do with Babylonian cuneiform eclipse records today.

By the way, there was a later ‘Nova Scotia’ eclipse on July 10, 1972, but Simon’s song came out in 1971. Time travel had not been invented yet. This is easyjust show up! Find a location in your area where there are likely to me many people, or contact your local museum and get on their list of ‘eclipse helpers’.

  1. If you have a telescope with the right filters, bring it with you and set it up so that people can view the eclipse before totality starts.
  2. Also, if you have one of those special ‘Hydrogen-alpha’ filters you can use it to show people what the surface of the sun looks like,There may still be a few sunspots to view this late in the current sunspot cycle.

Be prepared to answer all kinds of unusual questions, so make sure you have done your homework on the basic details about the sun, its corona and other features such as its size relative to Earth and other similar things. The only reason that total solar eclipses only last a few minutes for a ground-based observer is that that is about how much time it takes the lunar shadow, traveling at over 2,000 km/hr to pass you’re your geographic location.

  • But what would happen if you could fly along the path of totality at the same speed as the lunar shadow? Well, you would see a continuous eclipse for as long as the shadow touches Earth, which can be several hours from start to finish.
  • Astronomers figured this out long ago, but had to wait for the invention and deployment of non-military supersonic jets to carry out such a chase.

The scientific benefit is enormous because now you can study the sun’s corona for much longer than the 2-5 minutes usually allowed. On June 30, 1973, Concorde 001 intercepted the path of a solar eclipse over North Africa. Flying at Mach 2.05 the aircraft provided seven observers from France, Britain and the United States with 74 min of totality bounded by extended second (7 min) and third (12 min) contacts.

  • The former permitted searches for time variations of much longer period than previously possible and the latter provided an opportunity for chromospheric observations of improved height resolution.
  • The altitude, which varied between 16,200 and 17,700 m, freed the observations from the usual weather problems, and greatly reduced atmospheric absorption and sky noise in regions of the infrared.

The solar eclipse of March 20, 2015, was the first eclipse for which a significant impact on the power system occurred. The continental Europe and Great Britain generated about 90 Gigawatts of solar power and production was estimated to have decreased by up to 34 GW compared to a clear sky day.

Also for wind farms there is a potentially smaller effect because as temperatures decrease during the eclipse, winds also slacken a bit, and this could cause wind turbines to rotate less vigorously. Of course if you are on the path of totality, you will lose nearly 100% of your normal daylight illumination when totality happens.

It will seem like late-twilight with a narrow ring of daylight encircling your horizon. If you are only able to watch the partial eclipse, your experience will be quite different. Unless the sun is at least 75% covered by the moon, you may not even notice much illumination change at all unless you are aware the eclipse is happening.

It is only by the time the eclipse reaches about 90% coverage that you will start to notice a landscape dimming, and by about 95% you will definitely be aware of something happening to the sunlight even if you did not know there was an eclipse at that moment. The details, of course, will change depending on how aware you are of the exact timing of the event, and even your emotional state and its impact on your sensory acuity.

One thing you may notice once the eclipse reaches about 90% is that the shadows on the ground will start to seem less sharp as the light source (the illuminated sun) becomes smaller. Also look for crescent-shaped shadows cast by light passing through gaps in the leaves on trees. There are two orbit locations where eclipses can occur. These are the points in the lunar orbit that intersect the ecliptic plane where the Sun moves in the sky. Called the ascending node and the descending node, eclipses can occur at either node. The Moon must be in the full moon phase as it passes the node in order for a lunar eclipse to occur.

  • Similarly, solar eclipses only occur during new moon when this phase occurs at either node.
  • Because the Moon moves to the east in its orbit at about 3,400 km/hour.
  • Earth rotates to the east at 1,670 km/hr at the equator, so the lunar shadow moves to the east at 3,400 – 1,670 = 1,730 km/hr near the equator.

You cannot keep up with the shadow of the eclipse unless you traveled at Mach 1.5. Astronomers first have to work out the geometry and mechanics of how the Earth and Moon orbit the Sun under the influences of the gravitational fields of these three bodies.

  1. From Newton’s laws of motion, they mathematically work out the motions of these bodies in three-dimensional space, taking into account the fact that these bodies have finite size and are not perfect spheres, and that the Earth and Moon are not homogeneous bodies.
  2. From careful observation, they then feed into these complex equations the current positions and speeds of the Earth and Moon, and then program the computer to “integrate” these equations forward or backward in time to construct ephemerides of the relative positions of the Moon and Sun as seen from the vantage point of the Earth.

Eclipses are specific configurations of these bodies that can be identified by the computer. Current eclipse forecasts are accurate to less than a minute in time over a span of hundreds of years. The orbit of the moon is not stable. Because of tidal friction, the orbit of the Moon is steadily growing larger, so that the angular size of the moon from the Earth is shrinking.

The moon’s orbit is increasing by about 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) per year. When the moon’s mean distance from Earth has increased an additional 14,600 miles, it will be too far away to completely cover the sun. This is true even at perigee when its disk will be smaller than the sun’s disk even when the sun is farthest from Earth at aphelion.

At the current rate that the moon’s orbit is increasing, it will take over 600 million years for the last total solar eclipse to occur. A complicating factor is that the size of the sun itself will grow slightly during this time as it evolves as a star, which will act to make the time of “no more total eclipses” a bit sooner than 600 million years.

Solar eclipses are fairly numerous, about 2 to 4 per year, but the area on the ground covered by totality is only about 50 miles wide. In any given location on Earth, a total eclipse happens only once every hundred years or so, though for selected locations they can occur as little as a few years apart.

An example is the August 21, 2017 and April 8, 2024 eclipses, which will be viewed at the same spot near Carbondale, Illinois. Eclipses of the Moon by the Earth’s shadow are actually less numerous than solar eclipses; however, each lunar eclipse is visible from over half the Earth.

  • At any given location, you can have up to three lunar eclipses per year, but some years there may be none.
  • In any one calendar year, the maximum number of eclipses is four solar and three lunar.
  • The positions of the Sun and Moon are known to better than 1 arc second accuracy.
  • This means that on the Earth, the location of the track of totality is probably known to about (1.0/206265.0) x 2 x pi x 6400 km = 0.19 kilometers or a few hundred meters at the Earth’s equator.

“Atlas of Historical Eclipse Maps for East Asia 1500BC to 1900 AD” by F.R. Stephenson and M.A. Houlden, (Cambridge University Press) 1986. “Canon of Eclipses” by Theodor Oppolzer, translated by Owen Gingerich in 1962. (Dover Books, New York). “Canon of Solar Eclipses” by Jean Meeus and Hermann Mucke, (Astronomiches Buro, 1983) Vienna Austria, second edition.

  1. We all know that the Ancient Chinese were so fearful of the sun being ‘eaten by a dragon’ that they clanged pots and other noisy things to scare off the dragon and bring back the sun.
  2. This tradition apparently goes back a very long time, and may have been started several thousand years ago.
  3. We know that Ancient Chinese astrologers were carefully searching for eclipses as far back as 2100 BCE.

But what of other civilizations such as ancient Egypt and those such as the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs? Amazingly, there are no recorded documents or hieroglyphs that suggest the sudden and unpredicted absence of the sun disks associated with Quetzalcoatl (Inca) or Ra (Egypt) was noteworthy in the archeological record.

  • Part of this, in the case of Egypt, may be due to the fact that most of the eclipse tracks for the period from 2,000 BDC to 1000 BCE, for example, passed over extremely low population density areas in Egypt where there would be very few people to notice the 2-5 minute dimming of the sun.
  • However, the total solar eclipses of 1883, 1532 and 1337 BCE passed over Cairo, and the eclipses of 1949, 1257 and 1123 BCE passed close to Luxor.

Perhaps there are records somewhere yet to be translated, discovered, or critically analyzed, that mention such unusual solar events, no doubt witnessed by thousands of people each time in these high-population areas. During the last century, the precise timing and track of totality could be used to make ultra-precise measurements of the lunar orbit and improve the mathematical model for the gravitational interactions between earth and the moon.

  • In 1919, a total solar eclipse was used to test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
  • Studies of the solar corona during totality were also used to examine its structure and changes in time, and to relate the features seen with details on the solar surface.
  • Currently, there have been attempts to detect interplanetary dust falling into the sun by searching for its faint infrared light beyond the corona.

There are also studies of the solar transition region being performed by the glimpses of it provided during totality. Recently, lunar profile data from the NASA LRO mission have been used to predict the exact timing and brilliance of Bailey’s Beads shortly before totality.

  • So new scientific uses for this spectacular phenomenon are found nearly every year! This is about 7.5 minutes.
  • The longest total solar eclipse from 4000 BCE to 8000 CE, a span of 12,000 years, will occur on July 16, 2186 and will last 7 minutes 29 seconds.
  • Its path sweeps across Colombia, Venezuela and Guyana.

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, by comparison, will last a maximum of 2 minutes 43 seconds. About 70% of eclipses last longer than this. During the 5,000-year period from -1999 to +3000 (2000 BCE to 3000 CE), Earth will experience 11,898 eclipses of the Sun.

  • The statistical distribution of eclipse types for this interval is as follows: 4,200 partial eclipses, 3,956 annular eclipses, 3,173 total eclipses and 569 hybrid eclipses.
  • That means that, every 1000 years you have 840 partial eclipses, 791 annular eclipses, 635 total eclipses and 114 hybrid eclipses.

That works out to 2-3 eclipses of all kinds each year, and about 2 total solar eclipses every 3 years. Wellmy birthday is November 23. The last total solar eclipse on my birthday was in 2003. The next one is in the year 2337, followed by the years 2356 and 2728, so the intervals are 334 years, 19 years and 372 years.

  • So depending on which part of the cycle you are on, you may either wait about 20 years or about 350 years for the next occurrence! Check out the Five Millennium Canon of Eclipses to find the one nearest your birthday.
  • It is located at https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SEcatalog.html On July 28, 1851 the Royal Prussian Observatory at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, in Russia) commissioned one of the city’s most skilled daguerreotypists, Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski, to record a still image of the event.

A Saros Cycle is approximately 6585.3211 days, or 18 years, 11 days, 8 hours in length. One saros period after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, a near straight line, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur.

  1. The Moon will have the same phase and be at the same node and the same distance from the Earth.
  2. In addition, because the saros is close to 18 years in length (about 11 days longer), Earth will be nearly the same distance from the sun, and tilted to it in nearly the same orientation (same season).
  3. Given the date of an eclipse, one saros later a nearly identical eclipse can be predicted.

Each total solar eclipse track looks similar to the previous one, but is shifted by 120 degrees westward. The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse is part of the Saros 145 series. The previous total solar eclipse in this series occurred on August 11, 1999.

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The next one will be on September 2, 2035. The first cycle in this series occurred on January 4, 1639, and the last one will be on April 17, 3009. Of course the most spectacular use has been to study the faint corona of the sun, which can be observed by spacecraft such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) by making artificial eclipses, but ground-based telescopes and photography have also made many historical contributions to understanding the shape, structure and extent of the corona.

Also, total solar eclipses have been invaluable in improving our understanding of the lunar orbit. Whether a total solar eclipse occurs at a specific location and time on the surface of Earth depends on the lunar orbit, the motion of the moon along the orbit, the earth-moon distance and other factors.

Sophisticated physics-based computer models have been used for over a century to make accurate predictions of each eclipse to the second, and to the nearest mile on Earth. The best way to do this is to look at historical sightings of total solar eclipses from centuries or even millennia in the past. These sightings are often made by observers at specific geographic locations and who indicate the time of the eclipse from that location.

These distant-in-time observations can be calculated by the modern eclipse models and compared with the historical sighting, then the models can be adjusted by improving the parameters of the physics calculation until agreement is reached. This process sometimes results in new ‘science’ related to the shape of the moon, or gravitational perturbations in the lunar orbit that can take centuries to build up to measurable effects.

  • For example, in 1989 an astronomical event recorded on a clay tablet found in 1948 among the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit, Syria, was identified as a description of a total solar eclipse that occurred on 3 May 1375 BCE.
  • The information was used to provide a reference point to establish the long-term evolution of angular momentum in the Earth-Moon system Apart from being a wonderful word to use in the game of Scrabble, this astronomical term is an event in which one astronomical object is lined-up with another.

This leads to the pithy aphorism: all eclipses are syzygys but not all syzygys are eclipses. For example, Full moon and New Moon are syzygys involving the lining up of the Sun, Earth and Moon, therefore, lunar and solar eclipses are syzygys. When a planetary moon passes across the face of another body but does not eclipse it, this is called a transit.

From Earth, the small disks of Venus and Mercury can be seen passing across the face of the sun during transits of Venus and Mercury. These also involve the straight-line alignment of the Sun, Earth and each planet. On June 3, 2014, the Curiosity rover on Mars observed the planet Mercury transiting the sun, marking the first time a planetary transit has been observed from a celestial body besides Earth.

Previously, the Curiosity rover has captured images of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos transiting the sun. The sun will be well-way from its maximum sunspot numbers during this cycle (Number 24) which peaked in 2013 with about 130 spots during the peak month.

By August, 2017 the average number should be about 30 per month. Sunspot minimum will occur sometime in ca 2020 if the current trends continue. What this means is that there may be fewer large sunspots, and the ones you see before eclipse will be concentrated near the equatorial zone of the sun. As we get closer to the time of the eclipse, make sure you check with the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) page at http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/ to see what the sun looks like a day or so before the eclipse.

That way you can identify any large ‘active regions’ before you try to search for them at your telescope! Yes. Totality currently can never last more than 7 min 32 s. This value changes over the millennia and is currently decreasing. By the 8th millennium, the longest theoretically possible total eclipse will be less than 7 min 2 s.

The last transits of Venus occurred on June 8, 2004 and June 5, 2012, with the next pair predicted for December 10, 2117 and December 8, 2125. Transits of Mercury are much more common, with the most recent one occurring on May 9, 2016 and the next one on November 11, 2019. It is not unreasonable to ask when we might expect such transits to occur during the time of a total solar eclipse.

The next anticipated simultaneous occurrence of a solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury will be on July 5, 6757, and a solar eclipse and a transit of Venus is expected on April 5, 15232. No. If the corona of the sun were not so bright, you would see the moon very faintly illuminated by earthshine.

Our Earth is fully illuminated during the eclipse and it reflects quite a bit of light into space. Some of this lands on the lunar surface and provides a secondary source of illumination. But because the sun’s corona is so bright, your eyes will not see this earthshine effect. Because 223 synodic months is not identical to 239 anomalistic months or 242 draconic months, The 18-year saros periods do not endlessly repeat.

Each series begins with the Moon’s shadow crossing Earth near the north or south pole, and subsequent events progress toward the other pole until the Moon’s shadow misses Earth and the series ends. A full series from start to finish lasts about 1,300 years.

  • The August 21, 2017 eclipse is part of Saros Series 145 that includes 77 eclipses of which the August eclipse is number 22.
  • All eclipses in this series occur at the ascending node of the lunar orbit.
  • The series began with the partial solar eclipse of January 4, 1639 visible at the North Pole.
  • The series will end with the partial solar eclipse of April 17, 3009 visible from the South Pole.

The length of this series is 1,370 years. By the way, the total solar eclipse of August 21 is preceded two weeks earlier by a partial lunar eclipse on August 7, 2017, which occurs during the same eclipse season when the sun is nearest this node. Amazingly we may actually have a plausible answer to this question! For an eclipse to occur, you first need a star, and then a planet with a moon for which the moon will provide the eclipse.

At 1 billion years after the Big Bang, the oldest known planet PSR B1620-26 b had already formed. Located in the globular cluster Messier-4 about 12,400 light-years from Earth, it bears the unofficial nicknames “Methuselah” and “The Genesis Planet” because of its extreme age: about 12.8 billion years.

The planet is in orbit around the two very old stars: A dense white dwarf star and a neutron star. The planet has a mass of 2.5 times that of Jupiter, and orbits at a distance a little greater than the distance between Uranus and our own Sun. Each orbit of the planet takes about 100 years.

Like the large planets in our solar system, it is not unreasonable to assume that Methuselah may also have one or more moons, and that one may provide an eclipse of the white dwarf star from the surface of Methuselah, or that from the vantage point of one of its moons, another moon may provide such an eclipse or transit! Wellnot exactly! An eclipse requires that the sun or star be fully covered by the disk of a planet as the planet passes between the star and an observer on Earth.

From basic geometry, the amount of starlight dimming depends on the ratio of the circular area of the planet to the circular area of the star. For an eclipse, 100% of the star’s light is dimmed. This requires that the planet have the same diameter as the star, which is physically impossible.

However, when the planet’s diameter is much smaller than the star, astronomers call this a transit, and this is one of many methods that are actually used to detect planets orbiting distant stars. For example, a Jupiter-sized planet has a diameter of 143,000 km while a sun-like star has a diameter of 1.4 million km, so the ratio of their areas is 1/100.

As this exoplanet transits the disk of its star as viewed from Earth, the brightness of the star will dim by 1%. Since the 1990’s, astronomers have detected over 3,600 exoplanets orbiting 2,700 stars. Of these, NASA’s Kepler observatory has detected over 2,300 of the confirmed exoplanets using the transit method.

Another exciting aspect of exoplanet transit detections is that the star’s light passes through the atmosphere of the exoplanet on its way to Earth. By using an instrument called a spectroscope, astronomers can examine the way the atmosphere absorbs the star’s light to detect the composition of the atmosphere.

Dozens of exoplanets have been studied in this way so far. Most reveal signs of carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane. If oxygen is ever discovered, this will be an important sign that the planet harbors a biosphere of some kind! The moon’s limb is not perfectly smooth because of the mountain ranges and canyons that pepper the moon’s circumference as viewed from Earth.

Shortly before the moon fully blocks the disk of the sun during a total solar eclipse, flashes of light can often be seen around the circumference of the moon’s blackened disk. These are caused by sunlight passing through the canyons around the limb of the moon. The namesake for these ‘diamond ring’ flashes is Francis Baily; a prominent English astronomer and four-time president of the Royal Astronomical Society.

His vivid description of the phenomenon (following an eclipse on May 15, 1836) caused it to be associated with his name in 1836, but he was not the first historically-named person to discover this phenomenon. More than a century earlier, the famous English astronomer Sir Edmond Halley (discoverer of Halley’s Comet) described this spectacular phenomenon and also gave a correct explanation for it during an eclipse in 1715: “About two Minutes before the Total Immersion, the remaining part of the Sun was reduced to a very fine Horn, whose Extremeties seemed to lose their Acuteness, and to become round like Stars,

which Appearance could proceed from no other Cause but the Inequalities of the Moon’s Surface, there being some elevated parts thereof near the Moon’s Southern Pole, by whose Interposition part of that exceedingly fine Filament of Light was intercepted.” Thanks to the results from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which measured details across the entire moon to 2-meter accuracy, we can now predict exactly when and where these brilliant flashes of light will appear as a total solar eclipse takes place, because now we know where and how deep the lunar limb canyons will be.

Still, despite our abilities to predict it, this lovely effect and its diamond ring-like character will continue to mesmerize observers for all times to come! The first thing to realize is that the moon is in its ‘new’ phase, so whatever gravitational effects you might expect during a total solar eclipse also happen any time there is a New Moon, which happens every 28 days.

  • Starting as an observer on the ground, you are under the gravitational influence of Earth, the moon and the sun.
  • At the time of the August 21, 2017 eclipse, Earth will be 151.4 million kilometers from the sun, and the moon will be located 365,649 km from the surface of Earth.
  • Using Newton’s Law of Gravity, we can calculate the force of the sun, moon and Earth on an 80 kg person.

Earth accounts for 784.1 Newtons of force (176.42 pounds), the moon provides 0.0029 Newtons (0.01 ounces) and the sun provides 0.4633 Newtons (1.6 ounces). But because our Earth rotates, this also provides an ‘anti-gravity’ centrifugal force we can also calculate.

  1. So if we add the forces with their correct directions we get a total gravitational force of 784.1 – 0.0029 – 0.4633 = 783.634 Newtons or 176.317 pounds.
  2. So, you will be about 1.7 ounces lighter! The gravitational effect of the sun and moon being on the same side of Earth during New Moon is actually far more dramatic when you look at what happens to our entire planet.

First, the gravitational ‘tidal’ force of the moon and sun cause a body tide in the solid rock of Earth. If you are on the same line defined by the centers of Earth, the sun and moon, Earth’s crust actually bulges upwards by about 40 millimeters across a thousand-kilometer area on Earth’s surface.

What is the rarest eclipse?

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, casting the Moon’s shadow on Earth. A solar eclipse can only happen during a New Moon. The Moon’s orbit is titled 5 degrees to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Therefore a solar eclipse is a relatively rare phenomena and a Total or Annular eclipse even more rare, with the Hybrid eclipse the rarest of all.

To understand the difference between a Total and Annular eclipse of the Sun, it must be understood that the Moon has an elliptical orbit around Earth. In fact, the Moon’s distance from Earth varies from a minimum of 221,000 to a maximum of 252,000 miles. Therefore the Moon’s apparent size in our sky will vary by 13%,

When the Moon’s orbit is toward its minimum distance from Earth, the Moon will appear visually as a larger disk than the Sun. If an eclipse occurs during this time, it will be a Total solar eclipse because the Moon has totally obscured the Sun’s disk, producing the beautiful solar corona ejecting outward from the Sun.

  1. One important element to remember though is that the Moon’s shadow will obviously become narrower as it is cast from the Moon to Earth (in a shape of a cone with the wide end being at the Moon and the narrow end on Earth).
  2. Therefore the path of totality on Earth is narrow.
  3. It is also very short-lived as the Moon is moving quickly away from its perfect location of being situated between the Sun and Earth.

An Annular solar eclipse is different than Totality in that it occurs when the Moon is closer to its maximum distance from Earth in its orbit. If an eclipse happens during this situation, the Moon will appear visually smaller than the Sun and its shadow cast will not be long enough to reach Earth.

What reaches Earth is the antumbral or “negative” shadow. If you are within the antumbral shadow, you will see a solar eclipse where a thin ring or annulus of bright sunlight surrounds the Moon. Therefore Annular solar eclipses are still spectacular in that they are almost Total, but the solar corona is not seen due to the brightness of the annulus.

Like a Total eclipse, the Annular solar eclipse will have a narrow path on Earth with short duration, most often less than 10 minutes. A Hybrid eclipse is especially rare in that an Annular eclipse can change to a Total eclipse, or vice versa, along the eclipse path.

Due to Earth’s curvature, Earth may move through the Antumbral shadow (Annular eclipse) and Umbral shadow (Total eclipse) along different points of the eclipse path. DO NOT observe a solar eclipse with the naked eye. Serious eye damage can result. Use approved solar filters or cut a pin hole in a shoe box and watch the Sun’s light cast through the pin hole onto a smooth surface such as cardboard.

The only portion of a solar eclipse which is safe to view without filters is the brief time during totality. Otherwise all partial solar eclipses need approved filters. For approved filters, look for a certification of International Standard ISO 12312-2,

How rare is a lunar eclipse?

A lunar eclipse only occurs during a full Moon, when the Sun, Earth and Moon are all aligned. But despite the Moon only taking 29.5 days to orbit Earth and complete a cycle from full Moon to full Moon, there are only on average about three lunar eclipses every year.

What is the longest solar eclipse in history?

THE TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE OF JUL 22, 2009 – On the Dec 20, 2007, the United Nations in its 62nd General Assembly proclaimed the year 2009 the International Year of Astronomy, IYA 2009 to celebrate the first astronomical use of the telescope in 1609 by Galileo Galilei.

The IYA 2009 highlights global cooperation for peaceful purposes – the search for our cosmic origin and our common heritage that connect all the citizens of the world. The IYA 2009 vision is to convey to the people the excitement of discovery, help them rediscover their place in the universe through the day and night time sky and stimulate interest especially among the young in astronomy and science under a central theme – ‘The Universe, Yours to Discover’.

The activities take place at the global and regional levels. It is just befitting that a total solar eclipse of an unusually large duration takes place this year. It shall occur on Jul 22, 2009 and the total solar eclipse will be visible across south-east Asia and western Pacific.

It is with great interest we note that the path of totality shall pass over India also. However, like the 1999 eclipse, this time too the total eclipse will take place when Monsoon just gets vigorous. The other dampener is its happening just after the sunrise on the date. One therefore has to keep in mind the high likelihood of a cloud cover along the line of sight in the direction of the sunrise around the totality phase.

Scientific expeditions are planned to head eastwards where the greener pastures lay; the IIA team plans to observe the eclipse from its camp at Anji, a small hilly area near Hangzhou in the eastern China where the probability is 60%.The experiments that have been planned aim to study the existence of waves in the solar corona and their nature.

These are as follows: spectroscopy of the solar corona using a 30 cm two mirror system (coelostat) to direct the sunlight and the coronal light eventually onto the slit of a Littrow type spectrograph, and, photometry of the corona using two 40 cm telescopes in the red emission line and the green line through filters centered around 637.4 nm and 530.3 nm respectively.

For more details the reader can visit the website of the Institute: www.iiap.res.in, The solar eclipse event will be tracked in India with great interest. The path of totality passes over regions in India, Bhutan and China where cloud cover is normally present almost throughout around this time of the year.

However, the situation slightly improves in respect of cloudiness as one goes eastwards, along the path of totality. The duration of totality also increases correspondingly. Shanghai as a big city offers best prospects from the point of viewing the eclipse where the totality will last for 5min 56 sec.

Among the Indian cities, Patna is a good option. The eclipse of Jul 22, 2009 is the longest total solar eclipse of the Century: in fact the totality is of longest duration in any solar eclipse between 1991 and 2132. The next eclipse that will surpass it in duration is due on June 13, 2132 only.

It is thus of great interest that the forthcoming eclipse offers a totality lasting several minutes all along the path, lasting for up to 6 min 39 sec in the ocean about 100 km south of the Bonin Islands, southeast of Japan. The eclipse magnitude (the fraction of the Sun’s diameter obscured by the Moon.) is quite large at 1.0799.

The maximum theoretical duration for a total solar eclipse is 7 min 31 sec. The longest totality ever recorded was on the 20th June 1955 over the Philippines when totality lasted 7 minutes and 28 seconds. The maximum width of the path of totality is about 250 km.

  • The closer one is to the centre line of the path of totality the longer is the duration of totality.
  • Some general information on the Sun, the Moon and solar eclipses is as follows that will help one appreciate the event more fully.
  • While the actual diameters of the Sun and the Moon are vastly different, their angular diameters are very similar, the very basis of a grand spectacle these give rise to whenever the Earth, the Moon and the Sun get so aligned as to cause an eclipse of the Sun by the Moon while the Earth and the Moon go about in their respective orbits.

The respective angular diameters as seen from the Earth are: Maximum Minimum Sun 32’36” 31’32” Moon 33’39” 29’22” Since the orbits do not lie in a plane, that of the Moon inclined by 5deg 08 min, a solar eclipse does not happen on every New Moon day.

  1. In a Century, there are a total of 238 solar eclipses.
  2. The maximum number of solar eclipses in a year is five whereas minimum number is two.
  3. The next eclipse of the Sun to watch from India is an annular one, due on the 15th January 2010 when the Moon will fail to completely cover the disc of the Sun.
  4. In such an event the corona of the Sun is not visible because the annulus of the disc will simply outshine it.

The event will still be of interest and has a great educational value in its own right. The path shall pass over southern India around Kanya Kumari and Adam’s Bridge. The next time the path of totality passes over India will be on 20th March 2034 only. Fig 9: Path of totality over India of the Jul 22, 2009 Solar Eclipse. In the Indian subcontinent, the path of totality of the eclipse of Jul 22, 2009 starts out from the Gujarat coast, passing over northern India, northern Bangla Desh, eastern Nepal, Bhutan, northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean.

  1. The partial eclipse will be visible from a much wider region, as also from all over India.
  2. Major Indian cities the path of totality passes over are Bhavnagar, Surat, Ujjain, Indore, Bhopal, Sagar, Jabalpur, Varanasi, Allahabad (grazing), Gaya, Patna, Bhagalpur, Jalpaigudi, Guwahati (grazing) and Dibrugarh etc.
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The Table 1 below gives in brief local circumstances for the total eclipse in different cities that fall in the path of totality:

Table 1
City Second contact Third contact Sun
IST IST Altitude
Surat 06h 21m 06h 24m 02 deg
Bhopal 06 22 06 25 07 deg
Patna 06 25 06 28 15 deg
Jalpaigudi 06 26 06 30 19 deg

The figures are rounded off). Bangalore has had no luck with total solar eclipses since 1700; it witnessed an annular solar eclipse on 25.07.1748 (magnitude 0.93) and shall witness another on 22.06.2085 (magnitude 0.96).

What happens in April 2024?

Overview | 2024 Total Eclipse – NASA Solar System Exploration On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will cross North America, passing over Mexico, United States, and Canada. On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will cross North America, passing over Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, completely blocking the face of the Sun. The sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk. Safety is the number one priority when viewing a total solar eclipse. Be sure you’re familiar with when you need to wear specialized eye protection designed for solar viewing by reviewing,

After the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, the next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous United States will be on Aug.23, 2044. We can’t normally see the corona ­– the Sun’s outer atmosphere – because the Sun’s surface below it is so much brighter. But during a total solar eclipse, the corona becomes visible, offering unique opportunities to study it. When the Moon completely blocks the visible surface of the Sun during a total solar eclipse, viewers can remove their eclipse glasses. A total solar eclipse is the only type of solar eclipse where eclipse glasses can be momentarily removed. When a solar eclipse reaches totality, nocturnal wildlife sometimes wakes up, thinking that it’s nighttime, and non-nocturnal wildlife might think it’s time to head to sleep! Get ready for the 2024 total solar eclipse with this real-time 3D data visualization that allows you to explore any time, any place, in space.

How can you be safe during a solar eclipse?

Eye Safety for Partial and Annular Solar Eclipses – During an annular solar eclipse, as shown here, the Sun is never completely blocked by the Moon. Credits: NASA/Bill Dunford Partial or annular solar eclipses are different from total solar eclipses – there is no period of totality when the Moon completely blocks the Sun’s bright face.

Therefore, during partial or annular solar eclipses, it is never safe to look directly at the eclipse without proper eye protection. When watching a partial or annular solar eclipse directly with your eyes, you must look through safe solar viewing glasses (“eclipse glasses”) or a safe handheld solar viewer at all times.

Eclipse glasses are NOT regular sunglasses; regular sunglasses, no matter how dark, are not safe for viewing the Sun. Safe solar viewers are thousands of times darker and ought to comply with the ISO 12312-2 international standard. NASA does not approve any particular brand of solar viewers. The circular holes of a colander project crescent shapes onto the ground during the partial phases of a solar eclipse. Credits: Joy Ng If you don’t have eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer, you can use an indirect viewing method, which does not involve looking directly at the Sun. You can make your own eclipse projector using a cardboard box, a white sheet of paper, tape, scissors, and aluminum foil. With the Sun behind you, sunlight will stream through a pinhole punched into aluminum foil taped over a hole in one side of the box.

During the partial phases of a solar eclipse, this will project a crescent Sun onto a white sheet of paper taped to the inside of the box. Look into the box through another hole cut into the box to see the projected image. Credits: NASA Do NOT use eclipse glasses or handheld viewers with cameras, binoculars, or telescopes.

Those require different types of solar filters. When viewing a partial or annular eclipse through cameras, binoculars, or telescopes equipped with proper solar filters, you do not need to wear eclipse glasses. (The solar filters do the same job as the eclipse glasses to protect your eyes.) A woman looks at the Sun through binoculars that have been fitted with solar filters. Binoculars and telescopes can only be used to look at the Sun when used with solar filters specially designed for that purpose. Credits: NASA/Ryan Milligan Seek expert advice from an astronomer before using a solar filter with a camera, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device. A solar filter is attached to the Sun-facing end of a telescope. Credits: Carolyn Slivinski Eye Safety for Total Eclipses

Can you look at a solar eclipse?

How Do I View An Eclipse Safely? – Visitors using solar filters at to view an eclipse at Arches National Park NPS Photo / Neal Herbert The only safe way to look directly at the sun during an eclipse is through special-purpose solar filters, like eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers.

Remember the only safe time to look at the sun without solar filters is during the 2-4 minutes of total eclipse. It is never safe to look at the sun without solar filters during any other phases of the eclipse, or if you are viewing a partial or annular eclipse. Homemade filters or ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe for looking at the sun.

Solar filters should have:

  • An ISO 12312-2:2015 certification
  • The manufacturer’s name and address printed somewhere on the product

Do not use solar filters that are:

  • Missing ISO certification information
  • Torn, scratched, or have wrinkled lenses
  • Coming loose from their frames
  • Made before 2015

When was last solar eclipse?

Editor’s note: Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN — Sky-gazers across North America are in for a treat in 2024 when a total solar eclipse will pass over Mexico, the United States and Canada.

  • The highly anticipated celestial event doesn’t occur until April 8, but eclipse fans are already booking hotels within the path of totality, and experts suggest making plans now so as not to miss out.
  • That’s likely because a total solar eclipse won’t be visible across the contiguous US again until August 2044.

(It’s been nearly six years since the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017,) Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming eclipse. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun’s face. Those within the path of totality, or locations where the moon’s shadow will completely cover the sun, will see a total solar eclipse.

People outside the path of totality will still be able to see a partial solar eclipse, where the moon only blocks part of the sun’s face. During a total solar eclipse, the sky will darken as it would at dawn or dusk, and there are several stages of the eclipse that sky-gazers anticipate. Since the moon doesn’t suddenly appear between Earth and the sun, the event begins with a partial eclipse that causes the sun to resemble a crescent.

Depending on your location, the partial eclipse can last between 70 to 80 minutes, according to NASA, When the moon begins to cross in front of the sun, the star’s rays will shine around valleys on the moon’s horizon, creating glowing drops of light around the moon in a phenomenon called Baily’s beads.

As totality nears, Baily’s beads will quickly disappear until a single point of light remains, resembling a glistening giant diamond ring. The diamond ring will disappear when totality arrives, and there is no longer any sign of direct sunlight. Bright stars or planets may shine in the dark sky, and the air temperature will drop as the sun disappears.

The sudden darkness causes animals to grow quiet. The chromosphere, or part of the sun’s atmosphere, may glow in a thin pink circle around the moon during totality, while the sun’s hot outer atmosphere, or corona, will appear as white light. As the moon continues its trek across the sun’s face, the diamond ring and Baily’s beads and the partial solar eclipse will appear on the opposite side of the moon until the sun fully reappears.

  1. The total solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Mexico, Canada and more than 10 US states, while the partial solar eclipse is expected to appear in 49 states — weather permitting.
  2. Inclement weather is always the greatest obstacle to eclipse viewing.
  3. The eclipse will first appear over the South Pacific Ocean and begin its journey across North America.

Mexico’s Pacific coast is the first point of totality on the path, expected at 11:07 a.m. PT. The pathway will continue across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

  1. Then, it will cross over Canada in southern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, ending on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland at 5:16 p.m.
  2. 3:46 p.m. ET).
  3. An annular solar eclipse will cross North, Central and South America on October 14 and will be visible to millions in the Western Hemisphere.

This type of eclipse is similar to a total solar eclipse, except the moon is at the farthest point in its orbit from Earth, so it can’t completely block the sun. Instead, annular solar eclipses create a “ring of fire” in the sky as the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow.

  1. The annular solar eclipse will take a different path, beginning in the US and passing from the Oregon coast to Texas’ Gulf Coast, appearing in Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas.
  2. The annular eclipse will also be visible in parts of California, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona.
  3. After leaving the US, the eclipse will cross Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Panama and Colombia before ending off the Atlantic coast at Natal, Brazil.

Eclipses have sparked awe, superstition and fear in humanity for centuries. Total solar eclipses offer rare, direct glimpses of the sun’s corona and other features typically hidden by our star’s overwhelming brightness. It’s never safe to look directly at the sun without using specialized protection — except during totality when the sun’s light is completely blocked.

  1. At any hint of reappearing sunlight, wear certified eclipse glasses or use a handheld solar viewer.
  2. Separately, you can observe the sun with a telescope, binoculars or camera that has a special solar filter on the front, which acts the same way eclipse glasses would.
  3. Sunglasses won’t work in place of eclipse glasses or solar viewers, which are thousands of times darker and held to an international standard.

Don’t use torn, scratched or damaged eclipse glasses or solar viewers. Don’t look at the sun through any optical device — cameras lens, telescope, binoculars — while wearing eclipse glasses or using a handheld solar viewer, according to NASA, Solar rays can still burn through the filter on the glasses or viewer, given how concentrated they can be through an optical device, and can cause severe eye damage,

  1. Eclipses can also be viewed indirectly using a pinhole projector, like a hole punched through an index card.
  2. These function by standing with your back to the sun and holding up the card.
  3. The pinhole projects an image of the sun on the ground or other surfaces.
  4. But never face the sun and look directly at it through the actual pinhole.

If you’re sitting outside for a while awaiting the eclipse, don’t forget to apply sunscreen and wear a hat to protect your skin. Eclipses afford scientists the opportunity to study the sun and how it interacts with Earth in unique ways, and NASA has selected several projects to fund during the 2024 total solar eclipse.

“Scientists have long used solar eclipses to make scientific discoveries,” said Kelly Korreck, program scientist at NASA, in a statement. “They have helped us make the first detection of helium, have given us evidence for the theory of general relativity, and allowed us to better understand the Sun’s influence on Earth’s upper atmosphere.” One project will rely on NASA’s high-altitude research planes to take images of the eclipse from 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) above Earth’s surface to capture previously unseen details in the sun’s corona.

The images could also help scientists search for asteroids that orbit near the sun. Amateur radio operators will try an experiment during both the annular and total solar eclipses to see how these phenomena change the way radio waves travel. Operators in different locations will record the strength of their signals and how far they travel.

  1. Scientists are interested in tracking this distance because the sun directly influences Earth’s upper atmosphere, or ionosphere, which allows radio communications to travel farther.
  2. But when the moon blocks the sun, that can change.
  3. Scientists and citizen scientists alike are planning to observe the sun’s most active regions as the moon passes over them using the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope during both eclipses.

The sun is currently approaching solar maximum in July 2025, and scientists are eager to capture this peak of activity through a variety of observations that can only occur during eclipses.

How long will eclipse last?

The duration of totality for the 2024 eclipse won’t be the longest possible. But it will still last several glorious minutes. | Published: April 8, 2023 This is combination of two images taken during Total Solar Eclipse 2009 on the board of the ship in neighborhood of Iwo Jima Island. Marta and Michal Zolnowski Next year’s total solar eclipse is set to be a relatively long one. On April 8, 2024, the maximum duration of totality anywhere along the eclipse path will be 4 minutes 28 seconds.

  • For comparison, the maximum length of totality for the last total solar eclipse to cross the continental U.S., which occurred on Aug.21, 2017, was just 2 minutes 40 seconds.
  • Indeed, some eclipse totalities last but a few seconds.
  • And the longest eclipse totality from 2000 B.C.
  • To A.D.3000 is 7 minutes 29 seconds.

That eclipse will occur July 16, 2186.

What happens on the 20th of April 2023?

Solar eclipse of April 20, 2023 – Wikipedia Solar eclipse Solar eclipse of April 20, 2023 Partial from, Indonesia Map Type of eclipseNatureHybrid−0.39521.0132Maximum eclipseDuration76 sec (1 m 16 s)Coordinates Max. width of band49 km (30 mi)Times ()Greatest eclipse4:17:56References (52 of 80)Catalog # (SE5000) A occurred on Thursday, April 20, 2023.

  • A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun thereby totally or partly obscuring the Sun for a viewer on Earth.
  • A hybrid solar eclipse is a rare type of solar eclipse that changes its appearance from annular to total and back as the Moon’s shadow moves across the Earth’s surface.

Totality occurs in a narrow path across the surface of the Earth, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometers wide. Hybrid solar eclipses are extremely rare, occurring in only 3.1% of solar eclipses in the 21st century.

Totality for this eclipse was visible in the peninsula and in Western Australia, eastern parts of, as well as and parts of the province of in, More than 20,000 people watched the eclipse from the town of on Western Australia’s North West Cape. Providing infrastructure and services for the visitors (Exmouth’s normal population is less than 3,000) cost the A$20 million (US$13.5 million).

The date marked a significant moment of astrotourism and tourism in Western Australia. Portions of the eclipse’s path near and were annular. With the eclipse occurring 4.1 days after (April 16), the Moon’s apparent diameter was 1.02% larger than average.

Where is the total eclipse in 2027?

Eclipse Maps – On August 2, 2027, a total solar eclipse will occur in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. In Africa, the path of totality will cross over Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia. In Europe, the path of totality will cross over Spain and Gibraltar (U.K.).

  1. In the Middle East, the path of totality will cross over Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
  2. In the U.S., a partial solar eclipse will occur in parts of Maine.
  3. The maximum duration of totality for this eclipse will be 6 minutes and 23 seconds.
  4. The map below shows the path of totality over Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

To experience the total phase of the eclipse, you must be located within the path of totality represented on the map below. Areas outside the path of totality will get a partial solar eclipse only. ECLIPSE STORE

Is solar eclipse visible in Germany?

Solar Eclipse in Berlin en Current language: English October 25, 2022 © dpa In the fall of 2022, Berliners will once again be able to observe a partial solar eclipse, weather permitting. As with last year’s partial solar eclipse, solar coverage will remain below 50 percent. With suitable glasses and protected telescopes, the shadow of the moon in front of the solar disk can still be observed in good weather.

The partial solar eclipse in Berlin in 2022 will last 2 hours and 9 minutes. A good 32 percent of the sun will be covered at the peak of the eclipse at 12:13 pm. A slight general decrease in brightness can be expected at this level of occultation. The moon slowly moves in front of the sun starting at 11:09 am.

This will shine again without occultation starting at 1:19 pm. The next visible solar eclipse in Berlin will take place on March 29, 2025. Only about 15 percent of the star will be covered. Large-scale coverage of the sun in the capital will occur on August 12, 2026, when nearly 85% of the celestial body will be obscured.

What is the longest totality of the eclipse in 2024?

Total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 over Mexico, the USA, and Canada – Watch the Moon’s shadow fly from Mazatlan to Newfoundland on April 8, 2024! This animation simulates the view from a spacecraft 100 miles high that is chasing the eclipse. The dark oval represents where the total solar eclipse will be seen at that moment. These are the stages of a total solar eclipse. The partial phases last about an hour and 20 minutes. The next total solar eclipse to visit North America will be, The duration of totality will be up to 4 minutes and 27 seconds, almost double that of The Great American Eclipse of August 21, 2017.

The 2017 total solar eclipse was witnessed by about 20 million people from Oregon to South Carolina, and the upcoming 2024 Great American Eclipse is sure to be witnessed by many millions more. Because of what they saw — the exquisite beauty of the Sun’s corona hanging in the suddenly darkened sky — many millions more will know that a total solar eclipse is something truly worth seeing.

In the US, totality will begin in Texas at 1:27 pm CDT and will end in Maine at 3:35 pm EDT on April 8, 2024. Our GIF below, books, maps, and our new mobile app, show exact times and durations in many locations along the path of totality. If you’ve never seen a total solar eclipse before, put it on your bucket list and mark the date. This animated GIF shows the Moon’s shadow arcing across the Pacific, then traversing North America, and ending at sunset not far from Spain. The very longest duration will be near Torreon, Mexico at 4 minutes and 27 seconds. The inner black circle, the umbra, is where the shadow is complete — a total eclipse of the Sun.

The outer shadow circle, the penumbra, shows the extent of the partial eclipse. The partial eclipse will be slight near the outer circle and deep near the path of totality. In a deep partial eclipse, the sky will cool and sunlight will take on an eerie quality. We encourage you get inside the path of totality! 99% is not the same as 100%.

You will only see the corona when you are at 100% eclipse; inside the path of totality. This map of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse shows durations of totality, what time greatest eclipse is, the degree of partial eclipse outside the path of totality, and the major cities of North America.

Where can you see a lunar eclipse best?

Getting Started –

Use our Eclipse Calculator to find out if and when you can see a lunar eclipse at your location.Check the weather forecast so you can dress accordingly.Find a suitable place to view the eclipse. You should be able to see a lunar eclipse as long as you are on the night-side of the Earth when the eclipse occurs. Rural areas with little or no artificial lights have the clearest skies and the best viewing conditions. Urban areas, on the other hand, can provide interesting backdrops if you intend to photograph the eclipse,

What is a Blood Moon?

What is the best way to watch the eclipse?

How Do I View An Eclipse Safely? – Visitors using solar filters at to view an eclipse at Arches National Park NPS Photo / Neal Herbert The only safe way to look directly at the sun during an eclipse is through special-purpose solar filters, like eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers.

Remember the only safe time to look at the sun without solar filters is during the 2-4 minutes of total eclipse. It is never safe to look at the sun without solar filters during any other phases of the eclipse, or if you are viewing a partial or annular eclipse. Homemade filters or ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe for looking at the sun.

Solar filters should have:

  • An ISO 12312-2:2015 certification
  • The manufacturer’s name and address printed somewhere on the product

Do not use solar filters that are:

  • Missing ISO certification information
  • Torn, scratched, or have wrinkled lenses
  • Coming loose from their frames
  • Made before 2015