- - text and links as of last publication - -

November 3rd, 2013 Hybrid Solar Eclipse

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 2013 -that year's last solar eclipse, and last major astronomical event- is a hybrid eclipse, the November 3rd, 2013 hybrid solar eclipse. A hybrid eclipse or a 'annular/total eclipse,' is a eclipse which is part annular, part total along the eclipse's path. A hybrid eclipse is due to the relative positions of Sun, Moon, and Earth, and the Earth's curvature, with some places along the line of centrality reached by the umbra and others are reached by the antumbra only. for more about the solar eclipses, theoretically, see our tutorial 'Sun Eclipses'. In most cases of a hybrid eclipse the sequence is annular-total-annular along the path as for that eclipse it turns annular-total only as the annular further will last barely the first 15 seconds of the eclipse, by eclipse's beginning which is occurring over the Atlantic Ocean. For the remainder of the eclipse, it will remain total. As the eclipse then runs a long way over the Ocean it even misses West Africa and made no landfall before the coast of Gabon, North of Port-Gentil. Eclipse after that is running through central Africa, with its end at the border between Ethiopia and Somalia. The eclipse is occurring in Libra, the Scales as Saturn and Mercury will lie either side close to the eclipsed Sun. Like usual, a wide corridor of a partial eclipse is seen either side of the line of centrality, stretching from easternmost North America and norternn South America to the Middle East and Madagascar, respectively

Eclipse's main data are the following (data as of October 2012, F. Espenak, NASA's GSFC). The Moon's apparent diameter will be of 32' 15.2", compared to the Sun's 32' 14.8". Greatest eclipse occurs over the Atlantic Ocean at 12:47:36 UT, approximately 205 miles (330km) southwest of Liberia with the maximum duration of totality 1 minute and 39 seconds, and the Sun's at 71 degree above the horizon, and the path width is 35 miles (57km). for more about how to observe a solar eclipse, see our tutorial 'Observing a Sun Eclipse':
- greatest eclipse: 12:46:28.6 UT
- eclipse magnitude (fraction of the Sun's diameter obscured by the Moon at greatest eclipse): 1.0159
- U1 to U4 (moments of first-last external-internal tangency of the antumbra with Earth's limb; practically these are the moments of the eclipse for the places where the eclipse is annular); in UT: U1 at 11:05:17.1, U2 at 11:05:21.3, U3 at 14:27:42.7, U4 at 14:27:43.3
- 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), in UT: P1 at 10:04:33.8, P2 at 12:13:09.5, P3 at 13:20:01.1, P4 at 15:28:21.7

see a .PDF map for the November 3rd, 2013 hybrid solar eclipse. map courtesy Fred Espenak - NASA/GSFC

. for more about this eclipse and for more about solar and lunar eclipses generally, you may see at Fred Espenak's NASA's eclipse website