04/29/2014 – Ephemeris – Today’s weird annular eclipse

Ephemeris for Tuesday, April 29th.  The sun rises at 6:35.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 9 minutes, setting at 8:44.  The moon is new today, and won’t be visible.

This event has already happened,  and there was now way to be able to get to a spot too see its maximum effect.  What I’m talking about was this morning’s weird annular eclipse of the sun.  Australia saw the partial phase.  An annular eclipse is one in which the moon is too far away to completely fill the face of the sun at maximum eclipse, leaving a bright ring of the uneclipsed sun around the moon.  The path of annularity will just graze the earth over a spot in Antarctica.  The center of this annular shadow called an antumbra, a new word I learned from descriptions of this eclipse, will just miss the earth. As far as I know no one had  gone to the spot where the annular effect can be seen, so remote is its location.  It kind of reminds one that the earth is a ball in space.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Area on the Earth where the eclipse can be seen. Credit: “Eclipses During 2014”, F. Espenak, Observer’s Handbook – 2014, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, NASA eclipse website

Annularity as simulated in Stellarium.

For more information on this eclipse check here:  http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2014.html#SE2014Apr29A