Solar eclipse of December 14, 2001

An annular solar eclipse occurred on December 14, 2001. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide. It was visible across the Pacific ocean, southern Costa Rica, northern Nicaragua and San Andrés Island, Colombia. The central shadow passed just south of Hawaii in early morning and ended over Central America near sunset. This is the first solar eclipse to occur since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Solar eclipse of December 14, 2001
Map
Type of eclipse
NatureAnnular
Gamma0.4089
Magnitude0.9681
Maximum eclipse
Duration233 sec (3 m 53 s)
Coordinates0.6°N 130.7°W / 0.6; -130.7
Max. width of band126 km (78 mi)
Times (UTC)
Greatest eclipse20:53:01
References
Saros132 (45 of 71)
Catalog # (SE5000)9512

The moon's apparent diameter was near the average diameter because the eclipse occurred 7.9 days after perigee (December 6, 2001 at 22:49 UTC) and 6.7 days before apogee (December 21, 2001 at 13:03 UTC).

Images

Eclipses of 2001

Tzolkinex

Half-Saros

Tritos

Solar Saros 132

Inex

Solar eclipses 2000–2003

This eclipse is a member of a semester series. An eclipse in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.[1]

Note: Partial solar eclipses on February 5, 2000 and July 31, 2000 occur in the previous lunar year set.

Saros 132

This eclipse is a part of Saros cycle 132, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, containing 71 events. The series started with partial solar eclipse on August 13, 1208. It contains annular eclipses from March 17, 1569 through March 12, 2146, hybrid on March 23, 2164 and April 3, 2183 and total eclipses from April 14, 2200 through June 19, 2308. The series ends at member 71 as a partial eclipse on September 25, 2470. The longest duration of annular was 6 minutes, 56 seconds on May 9, 1641, and totality will be 2 minutes, 14 seconds on June 8, 2290. All eclipses in this series occurs at the Moon’s descending node.

Tritos series

This eclipse is a part of a tritos cycle, repeating at alternating nodes every 135 synodic months (≈ 3986.63 days, or 11 years minus 1 month). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee), but groupings of 3 tritos cycles (≈ 33 years minus 3 months) come close (≈ 434.044 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.

Metonic cycle

The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition, the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days). All eclipses in this table occur at the Moon's descending node.

Notes
  1. van Gent, R.H. "Solar- and Lunar-Eclipse Predictions from Antiquity to the Present". A Catalogue of Eclipse Cycles. Utrecht University. Retrieved 6 October 2018.

References

Photos:

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.