Solar eclipse of May 20, 2012

The annular solar eclipse of May 20, 2012 began in East Asia, played mainly over the North Pacific from and ended in western North America. Because many East Asian capitals were in the visibility region, including Hong Kong and Tokyo and Guangdong also China's most populous province, this eclipse could become one of the observed by most people at all. From Central Europe, the eclipse was not observed. It is the 58th of the 72 solar eclipses comprehensive Saros cycle with number 128 The annular phase lasted a maximum of 5 minutes and 46 seconds.

Course

First annular eclipse, the sun came out during the sunrise in the Chinese city of Beihai in the north of the Gulf of Tonkin. There was already after local time May 21 Subsequently, the corridor moved with annular visibility in a north-easterly direction along the coast of the South China sea, and over stressed many Chinese cities, for example, Zhanjiang, Maoming, Jiangmen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Shantou, Xiamen and Fuzhou. Also in northern Taiwan, including the capital Taipei, the moon pushed centrally before the sun, before the zone with annular visibility further continuing over the East China Sea to Japan. In Japan, the shadow path initially emphasized the east of the island of Kyūshū and Shikoku, before the largest metropolitan areas in Japan have been achieved in the southeastern part of the main Japanese island of Honshu: Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Yokohama and Tokyo. In Tokyo, the eclipse occurred at 7:34 local time and the annular phase lasted a little over 5 minutes. In Fukushima Prefecture, the area of the annular visibility left the Japanese home islands.

The darkness continued over the North Pacific Ocean, 400 kilometers southwest of the Aleutian island of Amchitka entered the maximum of the eclipse. The sun was there about 61 ° above the horizon. The width of the zone with annular visibility was 237 km there and was significantly smaller than at the beginning or at the end of darkness, where the width was about 300 km.

A little later the dark corridor crossed the International Date Line, so that the following sequence according to local time darkness took place a day earlier than the previous course, so on May 20. 17:34 local time zone clock reached the American continent with annular visibility in Port Orford in the U.S. state of Oregon. Annular to see was darkness except Oregon in the U.S. states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. The cities of Redding, Reno, St. George, Albuquerque and Santa Fe were in the zone of the annular visibility, also the eclipse could be observed just before sunset in the Grand Canyon.

The partial phase could be seen from East Asia, the northern polar region, Greenland, Alaska, Canada, USA and Mexico.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

In Phoenix, Arizona

To the east of Ogden, Iowa