X-Nico

unusual facts about eclipses



Coronal radiative losses

Before the first rocket missions, the corona could be observed only in white light during the eclipses, while in the last fifty years the solar corona has been photographed in the EUV and X-rays by many satellites (Pioneer 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Helios, Skylab, SMM, NIXT, Yohkoh, SOHO, TRACE, Hinode).

Dendera zodiac

Sylvie Cauville of the Centre for Computer-aided Egyptological Research at Utrecht University and Éric Aubourg dated it to 50 BC through an examination of the configuration it shows of the five planets known to the Egyptians, a configuration that occurs once every thousand years, and the identification of two eclipses.

First Babylonian Dynasty

The pair of lunar and solar eclipses occurred in the month Shimanu (Sivan).

Fred Espenak

He is co-author with Jean Meeus of Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, October 2006.

June 2011 lunar eclipse

According to PAGASA, the presence of pollutants over the metropolis which penetrates the reddish appearance of the Moon during the greatest stages of the eclipse and sunlight attracts into the atmosphere in the form of red light in contrast to July 1953 and July 2000 lunar eclipses with the same coloration.

Marcin Odlanicki Poczobutt

Poczobutt observed solar and lunar eclipses, comets and asteroids (including Ceres, Pallas, Juno), and calculated geographic coordinates of settlements in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including Vilnius and Hrodna).

Nathan ben Eliezer ha-Me'ati

Many anonymous translations are attributed to Me'ati, among them: (1) Razi's treatise on bleeding, "Ma'amar be-Haḳḳazah"; (2) Zahrawi's Kitab al-Taṣrif (Hebrew title, "Ẓeruf"); (3) Ibn Zuhr's "Kitab al-Aghdhiyah" (Hebrew title, "Sefer ha-Ṃezonot"); (4) an anonymous work on the causes of eclipses entitled "Ma'amar 'al Sibbot Liḳḳut ha-Me'orot."

Norman Lockyer

Lockyer led eight expeditions to observe solar eclipses for example in 1870 to Sicily, 1871 to India and 1898 to India.

Royal Frankish Annals

In addition to astronomical oddities, such as eclipses, the supernatural begins to enter the account, set against almost ritualistic yearly notices of the regular passages of Christmas and Easter.

Rømer's determination of the speed of light

The Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini had pioneered the use of the eclipses of the Galilean moons for longitude measurements, and published tables predicting when eclipses would be visible from a given location.

Rømer appears to be collecting data on eclipses of the Galilean moons in the form of an aide-mémoire, possibly as he was preparing to return to Denmark in 1681.

Solar eclipses on Jupiter

Spacecraft can be used to observe the solar eclipses on Jupiter, these include Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 (1973 and 1974), Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 (1979), Galileo orbiter (1995-2003), Cassini-Huygens (2000) and New Horizons (2007) observed the transits of their moons and its shadows.

Solar Saros 133

The period separating each of the 72 eclipses in the series is approximately 6585.3 days (18 years, 11 days); that period was first called a saros by astronomer Edmond Halley.

Southern Hemisphere

During solar eclipses viewed from a point to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn the Moon moves from left to right on the disc of the Sun (see, for example, photos with timings of the Solar eclipse of November 13, 2012), while viewed from a point to the north of the Tropic of Cancer (i.e., in the Northern Hemisphere) the Moon moves from right to left during a solar eclipses.


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