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The Total Solar Eclipse of July 2nd, 2019

CAUTION! OBSERVING A SUN ECLIPSE IS DANGEROUS AND MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE EYE DAMAGE, UP TO BLINDNESS, ANNULAR AND PARTIAL ECLIPSES INCLUDED! Observing a Sun eclipse necessitates DEDICATED SAFE TECHNIQUES!

That second solar eclipse in 2019 is a total solar eclipse occurring on July 2nd, 2019. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, along a certain path, may be seen entirely occulted by the Moon's disk, leading to the much famed show of the solar corona streaming away from the occulted disk of the Sun at greatest. Anywhere in the area of a partial solar eclipse, observers are treated with a Sun indented by the dark disk of the Moon. for more about solar eclipses, theoretically, see our tutorial "Sun Eclipses". The total solar eclipse of July 2nd, 2019 is occurring from the mid- and southwestern Pacific ocean to Central and Southern Americas. The eclipse centrality is beginning in the southwestern Pacific ocean, by 1030 nautical miles from New Zealand as it then will run in the Pacific for 4mn and 32.8s before making landfall in Chile, by the city of La Serena. No other landfall will have occurred in the Pacific except at Oeno Island in southern central Pacific, a remote coral atoll part of the Pitcairn Islands. From the Chilean shores, the eclipse will run southeast down to about Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina where the eclipse will be ending before reaching the Atlantic ocean. A lot of expeditions will occur in the Andean regions which usually benefit of clear skies as it will further be fall's end in the southern hemisphere (for more about what regions of Chile and Argentina concerned by the total eclipse, check that detailed map. map courtesy Totality-The Great American Eclipses of 2017 and 2024, by Mark Littmann and Fred Espenak (Oxford University Press, 2017)). Eclipse's path width is at 124.7 miles (200.6 kilometers). As the greatest eclipse occurs in the mid-Pacific ocean by 19:22:57.9 UT, the Sun there will be lying then at a 50 degree of altitude and the eclipse lasting 4 minutes 32.8 seconds. Like usual, a partial solar eclipse is seen either side of the line of centrality, over the whole southern Pacific, southern central America, and most of South America. The closer the centrality line, the more indented the Sun. The background of the total eclipse is in constellation Gemini, the Twins and the Moon will be 2.4 days after it reached perigee (which explains the length of that eclipse). Venus, Mars, and Mercury will be seen in the field

A illustration of how a partial eclipse looks like either side of a total or annular; numbers match the one found on a eclipse's chart

Eclipse's main data are the following (data as of November 2018). The Moon's apparent diameter will be of 32' 29.8", compared to the Sun's 31' 27.6". Greatest eclipse occurs in central Pacific ocean, at 19:22:57.9 UT, the duration is 04m32.8s and the Sun 49.6 degree above the horizon. for more about how to observe a solar eclipse, see our tutorial 'Observing a Sun Eclipse':
- greatest eclipse: 19:22:57.9 UT
- eclipse magnitude (fraction of the Sun's diameter obscured by the Moon at greatest eclipse): 1.0459
- U1 to U4 (moments of first-last external-internal tangency of the umbra with Earth's limb; practically these are the moments of the eclipse for the places where the eclipse is total); in UT: U1 at 18:01:10.0, U2 at 18:03:30.3, U3 at 20:42:23.9, U4 at 20:44:48.6
- P1 to P4 (moments of first-last external-internal tangency of the penumbra with Earth's limb; practically these are the moments of the eclipse for the places where the eclipse is partial; no P2 nor P3), in UT: P1 at 16:55:13.3, P4 at 21:50:38.5

see a map for the partial solar eclipse of July 2nd, 2019. map courtesy EclipseWise.com

. for more about this eclipse and for more about solar and lunar eclipses generally, you may see at the Internet, with Fred Espenak a reference in the domain