2019 Path of Totality
- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
This animation shows the Moon's umbra shadow as it passes over Chile and Argentina during the July 2, 2019 total solar eclipse. Through the use of a number of NASA datasets, notably the global elevation maps from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the shape and location of the shadow is depicted with high accuracy.
This animation shows the umbra and its path in a unique way. Elevations on the Earth's surface and the irregular lunar limb (the silhouette edge of the Moon's disk) are both fully accounted for, and they both have dramatic and surprising effects on the shape of the umbra and the location of the path. The umbra becomes a polygon with edges that are ruffled by the high elevations of the Andes. To read more about these effects, go here.
The animation provides an overhead view of the umbra and runs at a rate of 30× real time — every minute of the eclipse takes two seconds in the animation.
Earth radius | 6378.137 km |
---|---|
Ellipsoid | WGS84 |
Geoid | EGM96 |
Elevations | SRTM 3 arcsec DEM |
Moon radius | 1737.4 km |
Sun radius | 696,000 km (959.645 arcsec at 1 AU) |
Ephemeris | DE 421 |
Earth orientation | SOFA libraryiauC2t06a() |
Delta UTC | 69.184 seconds (TT – TAI + 37 leap seconds) |
ΔT | 69.368 seconds |
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Visualizer
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
Producer
- Genna Duberstein (ADNET)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Programmer
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
Datasets used in this visualization
Terra and Aqua BMNG (A.K.A. Blue Marble: Next Generation) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
Dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See more visualizations using this data setSRTM DEM (Collected with the SIR-C sensor)
LRO DEM (A.K.A. Digital Elevation Map) (Collected with the LOLA sensor)
LRO/SELENE SLDEM2015 (A.K.A. DIgital Elevation Model) (Collected with the LOLA/TC sensor)
A digital elevation model of the Moon derived from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter and the SELENE Terrain Camera. See the description in Icarus. The data is here.
See more visualizations using this data setDE421 (A.K.A. JPL DE421)
Planetary ephemerides
Dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See more visualizations using this data setNote: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.