Solar eclipse of May 10, 2013

Solar eclipse of May 10, 2013
Annularity viewed from Churchills Head, Australia.
Map
Type of eclipse
Nature	Annular
Gamma	-0.2694
Magnitude	0.9544
Maximum eclipse
Duration	363 sec (6 m 3 s)
Coordinates
Max. width of band	173 km (107 mi)
Times (UTC)
(P1) Partial begin	21:25:10
(U1) Total begin	22:30:34
Greatest eclipse	0:26:20
(U4) Total end	2:19:58
(P4) Partial end	3:25:23
References
Saros	138 (31 of 70)
Catalog # (SE5000)	9537

An annular solar eclipse took place on May 9–10 (UTC), 2013, with a magnitude of 0.9544. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.

Visibility

Annularity was visible from a 171 to 225 kilometre-wide track that traversed Australia, eastern Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Gilbert Islands, with the maximum of 6 minutes 3 seconds visible from the Pacific Ocean east of French Polynesia.

Images

• SolarEclipse2013May10A.GIF

  Animation of eclipse path

• Overview map of the annular solar eclipse of 10 May 2013.jpg

  Eclipse path

• Sol ecl ann 2013-5-10.PNG

  Simulation greatest of annularity from Tarawa, Kiribati.

• Solar eclipse visible in coconut leaf shadow.jpg

  Eclipse shadows from a coconut leaf shadow. From Tarawa, Kiribati at 12:30 pm local time (00:30 UMT)

• 

  Annularity at 8:08:13 am local time (May 9 at 22:38:13 UTC), viewed from Churchills Head north of Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, Australia. High cloud present at time of photo.

Related eclipses

Solar eclipses 2011-2014

Each member in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.

Note: Partial solar eclipses on January 4, 2011, and July 1, 2011, occur in the previous semester series.

Solar eclipse series sets from 2011–2014

Descending node			Ascending node
Saros	Map		Saros	Map
118	June 1, 2011 Partial		123	November 25, 2011 Partial
128 Middlegate, Nevada	May 20, 2012 Annular		133 150px Ellis Beach, Queensland	November 13, 2012 Total
138 Renner Springs, Australia	May 10, 2013 Annular		143 150px Partial from Accra, Ghana	November 3, 2013 Hybrid
148	April 29, 2014 Annular		153 Partial from Minneapolis, Minnesota	October 23, 2014 Partial

Tritos series

This eclipse is a part of a tritos cycle, repeating at alternating nodes every 135 synodic months (≈ 3986.63 days, or 11 years minus 1 month). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee), but groupings of 3 tritos cycles (≈ 33 years minus 3 months) come close (≈ 434.044 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.

Series members between 1901 and 2100 are:

March 17, 1904 (Saros 128)	February 14, 1915 (Saros 129)	January 14, 1926 (Saros 130)
December 13, 1936 (Saros 131)	November 12, 1947 (Saros 132)	October 12, 1958 (Saros 133)
September 11, 1969 (Saros 134)	August 10, 1980 (Saros 135)	July 11, 1991 (Saros 136)
June 10, 2002 (Saros 137)	May 10, 2013 (Saros 138)	April 8, 2024 (Saros 139)
March 9, 2035 (Saros 140)	February 5, 2046 (Saros 141)	January 5, 2057 (Saros 142)
December 6, 2067 (Saros 143)	November 4, 2078 (Saros 144)	October 4, 2089 (Saros 145)
September 4, 2100 (Saros 146)

Metonic cycle

The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days).

References

• Earth visibility chart and eclipse statistics Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC
  • Google interactive map
  • Besselian elements
• Photos:
  • Cape York Annular Eclipse APOD, 5/11/13
  • Partial Solar Eclipse with Airplane APOD, 5/13/13