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The October 23rd, 2014 Partial 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 -and last- solar eclipse in 2014 -and that year's last major astronomical event- is a partial solar eclipse occurring on October 23rd, 2014. 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". As the greatest eclipse occurs at 21:44:31 UT, much of North America is treated with a partial eclipse. The more North (or northeast in Alaska), the more the Sun indented and the more East, the earliest! The Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia is also concerned. Of interest is that the Moon's shadow will pass about 420 miles above Earth's surface at the time of the greatest

Eclipse's main data are the following (data as of October 2013, NASA Eclipse Web Site). The Moon's apparent diameter will be of 30' 31", compared to the Sun's 32' 9.2". Greatest eclipse occurs in northern Canada at 21:44:31.4 UT. for more about how to observe a solar eclipse, see our tutorial 'Observing a Sun Eclipse':
- greatest eclipse: 21:44:31.4 UT
- eclipse magnitude (fraction of the Sun's diameter obscured by the Moon at greatest eclipse): 0.8114
- 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 due to the specific configuration of the eclipse), in UT: P1 at 19:37:33.0, P4 at 23:51:39.8

see a .PDF map for the April 23rd, 2014 partial solar eclipse. map courtesy NASA Eclipse Web Site

. for more about this eclipse and for more about solar and lunar eclipses generally, you may see at NASA Eclipse Web Site