Solar eclipse of April 8, 2005

With the eclipse of 8 April 2005, it was a hybrid eclipse, the rare borderline case between a total and an annular eclipse. She was visible in large areas of the South Pacific, in some peripheral areas of Antarctica, Central America and the Caribbean, large parts of South America as well as in the southern areas of North America. In the U.S., the eclipse could be observed in their partial phase of Central Europe, however, this eclipse was unobservable.

The beginning and end of the eclipse was annular on the Central line, between the darkness was total. At the maximum, the totality zone had a width of only 27 kilometers, the totality lasted only 42 seconds. For this limiting case between total and annular eclipse occurred because of the apparent solar and lunar diameter on this day were nearly equal, the moon was just a little bigger.

The central line of the eclipse began east of New Zealand and continued in a northeasterly direction by the Pacific Ocean on. At 108 ° W the central line moved to the northern hemisphere, at this time the darkness had already exceeded the maximum. The central line still led by Panama, Colombia and Venezuela, where the annular phase near the northern coast of South America came to an end.

Novelty of this eclipse was that the darkness, according to local time began on April 9 and ended on April 8, as the shadow path crossed the International Date Line to the east.