08/08/2017 – Ephemeris – Eclipse seasons

Ephemeris for Monday, August 7th. The Sun rises at 6:36. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 23 minutes, setting at 8:59. The Moon, at full today, will rise at 9:00 this evening.

At two weeks before the great solar eclipse, the world is experiencing another eclipse, this one is a partial lunar eclipse where the Moon will just clip the northern part of the Earth’s shadow this afternoon our time. It will be mainly visible from Asia. Eclipses occur in seasons of about a month long that occur at a bit less than six month intervals, so eclipses will occur a little earlier next year to the this. That’s because the crossing points of the Moon’s and the Earth’s orbital planes regress slowly westward. In an eclipse season two eclipses will occur: a solar and a lunar eclipse. On rare occasion when a lunar eclipse occurs in the center of a season a partial solar eclipse can occur two weeks before and again after the lunar eclipse, but they will affect the opposite polar regions of the Earth.

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

Addendum

Table of this and next three eclipse seasons

Date	Eclipse Type	Notes
08/07/2017	Lunar Eclipse – partial	Moon clips northern part of Earth’s umbra
08/21/2017	Solar Eclipse – total	Path of totality crosses US
01/31/2018	Lunar Eclipse – total	Moon crosses just south of center of umbra
02/15/2018	Solar Eclipse – partial	Visible mostly from Antarctica
07/13/2018	Solar Eclipse – partial	Seen from southern Australia
07/27/2018	Lunar Eclipse – total	Moon crosses center of umbra
08/11/2018	Solar Eclipse – partial	Seen from northern Europe, Asia
01/06/2019	Solar Eclipse – partial	Seen mostly from northern Pacific Ocean
01/21/2019	Lunar Eclipse – total	Moon crosses just north of center of umbra