2021 Annular Solar Eclipse
- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
A visualization of the Moon's shadow during the June 10, 2021 annular solar eclipse showing the antumbra (black oval), penumbra (concentric shaded ovals), and path of annularity (red). Images of the Sun show its appearance in a number of locations, each oriented to the local horizon.
Also available on the NASA SVS YouTube channel.
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This is an annular (
ring) eclipse — not to be confused with
annual.At the time of the eclipse, the Moon is too far away from the Earth, and therefore too small in the sky, to completely cover the Sun. The central part of the shadow, where the silhouette of the Moon is completely surrounded by a ring of sunlight, is called the antumbra. The part of the shadow outside the antumbra, where observers see a partial eclipse, is the penumbra.
In the animation, the antumbra is the small black oval. The streak it leaves in its wake is the path of annularity. Anyone within this path will see the annular ring effect when the antumbra passes over them. Steps in the shading denote different percentages of Sun coverage (obscuration), at levels of 80%, 60%, 40% and 20%. The images of the Sun show its appearance at a number of locations during the eclipse, each oriented to the local horizon.
The numbers in the lower left corner give the latitude and longitude of the center of the antumbra as it moves, along with the altitude of the Sun above the horizon at that point. Also shown is the duration of annularity: for anyone standing at the center point, this is how long the ring effect will last. When these numbers are missing, the center of the shadow cone isn't touching the Earth.
The following table lists some of the constants and data used to create these media items.
Earth radius | 6378.137 km |
---|---|
Earth flattening | 1 / 298.257 (the WGS 84 ellipsoid) |
Moon radius | 1737.4 km (k = 0.2723993) |
Sun radius | 696,000 km (959.634 arcsec at 1 AU) |
Ephemeris | DE 421 |
Earth orientation | SOFA libraryiauC2t06a() |
Delta UTC | 69.184 seconds (TT – TAI + 37 leap seconds) |
ΔT | 69.363 seconds |
A number of sources explain Bessel’s method of solar eclipse calculation, including chapter 9 of Astronomy on the Personal Computer by Oliver Montenbruck and Thomas Pflager and the eclipses chapter of The Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac. The method was adapted to the routines available in NAIF's SPICE software library.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Visualizer
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
Producer
- Sarah Frazier (SGT)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
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 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.