Solar eclipse of July 22, 2009

The total solar eclipse of 22 July 2009 was a time of 6 minutes and 39 seconds, the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century and is exceeded by an eclipse with a longer duration of totality only in June 2132. The zone of totality was over India and China (including via Shanghai) and moved further out into the Pacific Ocean, where there is also the maximum of the eclipse occurred. The width of the zone of totality was there 259 km. In Shanghai, the totality duration was approximately 5 minutes.

In its partial phase, the darkness could be observed in a large part of Asia. From Europe, the eclipse was not observed.

Classification of Darkness

Since the moon the day before the darkness its perigee path point ( perigee ) went through and the way of the earth through the sonnenfernsten point ( aphelion ) dated back only 18 days, the apparent diameter of the moon is relatively large and the sun was quite small, so that it a quite long totality came.

The eclipse is part of Saros cycle 136, the darkness of this taking place on the South Node series were all totally and very long in the past century. This series also includes the longest eclipse of the 20th century on 20 June 1955, a totality of 7 minutes and 8 seconds and the legendary " Mexican eclipse " of 11 July 1991 of 6 minutes and 53 seconds of totality, the direct predecessor this eclipse in the Saros cycle. The solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 during which the predicted by general relativity gravitational deflection of light was checked and confirmed, belongs to this series.

The following eclipses of this cycle in the 21st century will continue to be total, the maximum length of totality but will lose weight, but also the eclipse of September 14, 2099 will still have a totality of more than 5 minutes.

Course

The umbra hit the Earth for the first time at 00:51 UT (Universal Time ) in the Arabian Sea just off the west coast of India. From there, the umbra of Surat to the east moved across the Indian subcontinent and crossed the million cities Vadodara, Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Varanasi and Patna, where the darkness was in each case to see just after sunrise. The totality lasted there already about three minutes.

The shadow path grazed the southeastern Nepal and the northern Bangladesh, Bhutan and moved on over grazed at 01:10 UT the far north of Myanmar before he reached the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. Over the next half hour, the Chinese mega- cities Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hefei, Hangzhou, and Shanghai were in the range of the total eclipse. In Shanghai, the central line is a little north, the totality lasted quite exactly five minutes due to heavy rain, however, was to see the sun, but rather a few miles south in Wuzhen.

Then the umbra left the mainland and touched in Subsequently, only a few island groups. First, the shadow path crossed the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea before it reached the south of the Japanese island of Kyushu lying Ryukyu Islands. About 1200 kilometers to the east in the Pacific the umbra reached the Ogasawara Islands. On the belonging to this group of islands volcanic island of Kita- Iwo Jima took 6 minutes and 34 seconds on the longest to be seen on land totality.

On the way of the umbra in a southeasterly direction, the maximum of the eclipse at the site was at 2:35 UT reached 24 ° 13 ' N, 144 ° 6' O24.21144.10666666667 in the Pacific. In a totality duration of 6 minutes and 39 seconds on the central line the width of the zone of totality reached here almost 259 km, while the sun was at 86 ° almost vertically above the southern horizon.

Northeast of the Solomon Islands, near the equator, the umbra met at the Marshall and Gilbert Islands again on land. This rather widely scattered islands and atolls have been achieved from the umbra between 03:30 UT and 04:00 UT, the maximum totality duration decreased from 5 minutes and 44 seconds to 4 minutes 37 seconds off.

The umbra reached the southern hemisphere and just as even the dateline before he left at 4:17 UT in the Pacific the earth.

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