February 2017 Annular Solar Eclipse Favors South Atlantic Ocean

Summary: The February 2017 annular solar eclipse favors the South Atlantic Ocean and is visible as a partial eclipse for three of Earth’s seven continents.

graphics and details for annular solar eclipse of Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017: "Permission is freely granted to reproduce this data when accompanied by an acknowledgment, Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA GSFC Emeritus," via NASA Eclipse Web Site

The February 2017 annular solar eclipse, in which the sun extends as a ring of fire beyond the lunar disk, favors the South Atlantic Ocean, southern South America and southwestern Africa with its path of annularity and offers visibility over a larger area as a partial eclipse.

The February 2017 solar eclipse’s annular path begins over the southeastern Pacific Ocean and crosses southern Argentina and southern Chile in South America. Continuing across the South Atlantic, the path of annularity then crosses Angola and Zambia in Southern Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa.

The path of partiality affords expanded visibility beyond the path of annularity’s narrow sweep. For South America, the partial eclipse encompasses all of Argentina and Chile within its area of visibility and also includes all of Paraguay and Urugay. Most of Bolivia, much of Brazil, and southern Peru also fall within the South American parameters of the path of partiality.

Across the South Atlantic, the path of partiality spans much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries lying within the partial eclipse’s path comprise Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The great swath traversed by the path of partiality adds a third continent, Antartica, to the area of visibility. Much of three of Earth’s seven continents is included in the partial eclipse’s visibility parameters.

The partial eclipse expands the visibility swath of the two oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, favored by the annular eclipse. The path of partiality stretches northward into the North Atlantic.

In addition, the partial eclipse grants visibility to two more oceans, the western Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean. The Arctic Ocean is the only one of Earth’s five oceans that is completely excluded for the path of partiality.

Five contact instants track the annular eclipse’s progress by way of the touching of Earth’s surface by the moon’s antumbral shadow cone. The antumbral shadow extends beyond the umbra, the darkest part of the moon’s shadow. The penumbra, which flanks the antumbra and umbra as the faint, partially lit portion of moon’s shadow, is responsible for partial solar eclipses. The umbral shadow accounts for total solar eclipses.

Retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, known popularly as Mr. Eclipse, expresses the contact instants in Universal Time (UT1), the principal form of Universal Time (UT), an Earth’s rotation-based time standard.

U1 registers the instant of first external contact of the edge of the antumbral shadow cone with Earth’s surface. U1 takes place Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017, at 13:15:18.2 UT1 (8:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time). U1 touches Earth at 42 degrees 56.3 minutes south latitude, 113 degrees 37.8 minutes west longitude. The location is in the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

U2 refers to the instant of first internal contact of the entire antumbral shadow with Earth’s surface. U2 happens at 13:16:54.3 UT1 (8:16 a.m. EST). U2 touches Earth at 43 degrees 18.9 minutes south latitude, 114 degrees 08.2 minutes west longitude. The location also in the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

Greatest eclipse indicates the instant of closest passage of the lunar shadow cone’s axis to Earth’s center. The greatest eclipse takes place at 14:54:32 UT1 (9:54 a.m. EST). The location is the South Atlantic Ocean. At the instant of greatest eclipse, annularity has a duration of 44 seconds.

U3 marks the instant of last internal contact of the entire antumbral shadow with Earth’s surface. U3 occurs at 16:30:07.6 UT1 (4:30 p.m. EST). U3 touches Earth at 11 degrees 6.2 minutes south latitude, 27 degrees 20.4 minutes east longitude. The location is in southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

U4 logs the instant of last external contact of the antumbral shadow’s edge with Earth’s surface. U4 happens at 16:31:37.7 UT1 (4:31 p.m. EST). U4 touches Earth at 10 degrees 44.7 minutes south latitude, 26 degrees 54.5 minutes east longitude. The location also is in southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The takeaway for the February 2017 annular solar eclipse is its favor of the South Atlantic Ocean for its path of annularity and its expanded visibility as a partial eclipse over three continents and four oceans, primarily in the Southern Hemisphere.

animation of path of annular eclipse, Feb. 26, 2017: A.T. Sinclair/NASA Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

graphics and details for annular solar eclipse of Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017: "Permission is freely granted to reproduce this data when accompanied by an acknowledgment, Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA GSFC Emeritus," via NASA Eclipse Web Site @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplot2001/SE2017Feb26A.GIF

animation of path of annular eclipse, Feb. 26, 2017: A.T. Sinclair/NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SE2017Feb26A.GIF

For further information:

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