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The Partial Solar Eclipse of January 6th, 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 first solar eclipse -- and first major astronomical event in 2019 -- is a partial solar eclipse, the partial solar eclipse of January 6th, 2019. A partial solar eclipse occurs when neither the 'umbra' nor the 'antumbra' of the eclipse touches Earth in any place as the 'penumbra' does, only. 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"

That partial eclipse will be moving from eastern Far East to from the Bering Strait to eastern Pacific, and from the Kamchatka Peninsula, North to the mid-Pacific ocean, South. The greatest, by 01:41:29 UT, has the pecularity of occurring on the day/night terminator, in Russia's Far East, with about a Sun's indentation of about 80 percent, which is very important. It will be the midnight Sun over those polar regions, generally. The more away southwards, the less the Sun will be indented down to the eclipse's boundaries. The eclipse is seen against the background of constellation Sagittarius, the Archer as it will be 3.1 days before the Moon reaches apogee

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

Eclipse's main data are the following (data as of November 2018, EclipseWise.com). The Moon's apparent diameter will be of 29' 40.8", compared to the Sun's 32' 31.8". Greatest eclipse occurs in Russian Far East at 01:41:28.3 UT. for more about how to observe a solar eclipse, see our tutorial 'Observing a Sun Eclipse':
- greatest eclipse: 01:41:28.3 UT
- eclipse magnitude (fraction of the Sun's diameter obscured by the Moon at greatest eclipse): 0.7146
- 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 are given), in UT: P1 at 23:34:08.7, P4 at 03:48:50.3

see a map for the partial solar eclipse of January 6th, 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