Dec. 2, 1937, Annular Eclipse Was Second of Two 1937 Solar Eclipses

Summary: The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular eclipse was second of two 1937 solar eclipses, of which the first was total, and 1937's fourth and last eclipse.

Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse details: Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC, via NASA Eclipse Web Site

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular eclipse was the second of two 1937 solar eclipses, of which the first was the Tuesday, June 8, total solar eclipse, and was the fourth and last of the year's quartet of two lunar and two solar eclipses.

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse's path of annularity favored the Northern Hemisphere. The path began in the North West Pacific Ocean, offering all-eclipse visibility to Japan's Ogasawara Islands, located southeast of Japan's largest island, Honshu. Dipping south toward the Equator, the path traversed the Central North Pacific Ocean's Ralik and Ratak chains of the Marshall Islands (then part of the Empire of Japan's League of Nations-authorized South Seas Mandate). After greatest eclipse, the path swerved northward to include Tabuaeron and Teraina atolls in the Republic of Kiribati (then Gilbert Islands). The path of annularity lifted off in the North East Pacific Ocean, west-southwest of Mexico's Baja California Sur and northwest of Isla Socorro (Socorro Island), the largest of the Revillagigedo Archipelago's four volcanic islands.

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, solar event's path of partiality stretched northward to the North Pacific Ocean's marginal Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean's marginal Chukchi Sea. The path extended southward across the Equator through the South Pacific Ocean's low latitudes.

The path of partiality favored the continents of Asia, Australia and North America with varying visibility. Asia's Russian Far East benefited from the path's northern limits. The Australian continent's island of New Guinea fell within the path's southern limits. In North America, the path skimmed California, Oregon and Washington in the contiguous United States and British Columbia in far western Canada and then swerved widely across southern Alaska.

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, solar event began with a partial eclipse at 20:05:02.9 Universal Time (3:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), according to NASA Eclipse Web Site's eclipse predictions by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) astrophysicist, now retired, Fred Espenak. The instant of first external contact of the lunar penumbra (lighter, outer shadow) with Earth's limb, designated as P1, starts a partial solar eclipse.

The December 1937 solar event's annular eclipse began at 21:14:30.3 UT (4:14 p.m. EST). The instant of first external contact of the lunar umbra (darker, inner shadow) with Earth's limb, designated as U1, initiates an annular solar eclipse.

Annularity describes an annular solar eclipse's maximum phase, in which the entire lunar disk is silhouetted against the sun. Annularity takes place between the annular eclipse's second and third umbral contacts, explains Fred Espenak in NASA Eclipse Web Site's Glossary of Solar Eclipse Terms. The second and third umbral contacts entail internal umbral tangency.

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse registered greatest eclipse at 23:05:18.2 UT (6:05 p.m. EST). Greatest eclipse references the instant of closest passage of the lunar shadow's axis to Earth's center.

Greatest eclipse's geographic coordinates of 4 degrees 01.6 minutes north latitude at 167 degrees 49.5 minutes west longitude place the event in the Central North Pacific Ocean. The local circumstances at greatest eclipse revealed the event's duration at 12 minutes 00.4 seconds and the path of annularity's width at 344.4 kilometers.

At greatest eclipse, the moon's geocentric coordinates were right ascension of 16 hours 35 minutes 06.6 seconds and declination of minus 21 degrees 37 arcminutes 00.8 arcseconds. The sun's geocentric coordinates were right ascension of 16 hours 35 minutes 02.1 seconds and declination of minus 22 degrees 0 arcminutes 36.5 arcseconds.

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse's second umbral contact, designated as U2, took place at 21:22:03.9 UT (4:22 p.m. EST). An annular eclipse's second umbral contact sequences as the first internal contact of the lunar umbra with Earth's limb.

The December 1937 annular solar eclipse's third umbral contact, designated as U3, occurred Friday, Dec. 3, at 00:48:33.6 UT (Thursday, Dec. 2, at 7:48 p.m. EST). An annular eclipse's third umbral contact numbers as the last internal contact of the lunar umbra with Earth's limb.

The December 1937 solar event's annular eclipse ended Friday, Dec. 3, at 00:56:08.1 UT (Thursday, Dec. 2, at 7:56 p.m. EST). The instant of last external contact of the lunar umbra with Earth's limb, designated as U4, ends the annular solar eclipse.

The December 1937 solar event's partial eclipse terminated Friday, Dec. 3, at 02:05:35.6 UT (Thursday, Dec. 2, at 9:05 p.m. EST). The instant of last external contact of the lunar penumbra with Earth's limb, designated as P4, ends the partial solar eclipse.

Fred Espenak's EclipseWise website gives solar and lunar details of the Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, solar eclipse as placement of the sun in Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer constellation and as occurrence of lunar apogee 0.7 days later. Apogee (Ancient Greek: ἀπόγειον, apógeion, “away from Earth” + ἀπό, apó, “away” + γῆ, gê, “Earth”), the farthest center-to-center distance between the moon and Earth, was reached Friday, Dec. 3, at 16:50 UTC (11:50 a.m. EST), at a distance of 406,536 kilometers, according to computer programmer John Walker's Fourmilab Switzerland website.

The Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse occurred as the second of the year's two solar eclipses and as the fourth and last of the year's four eclipses. The year's first solar eclipse had taken place as a total solar eclipse on Tuesday, June 8, 1937, and had numbered as the second of the year's four eclipses. The June 1937 total solar eclipse sandwiched between the year's first and third eclipses, the Tuesday, May 25, 1937, penumbral lunar eclipse and the Thursday, Nov. 18, 1937, partial lunar eclipse.

The takeaways for the Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse are that it was the second of two 1937 solar eclipses, of which the first, Tuesday, June 8, was a total solar eclipse; that the December annular eclipse numbered as the last of the year's quartet of two lunar and two solar eclipses; that the path of annularity favored the Northern Hemisphere, tracking from Japan's Ogasawara Islands in the North West Pacific to the path's liftoff in the North East Pacific, northwest of Mexico's Isla Socorro (Socorro Island) in the Revillagigedo Archipelago; and that the path of partiality extended northward to the North Pacific Ocean's marginal Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean's marginal Chukchi Sea and southward across the Equator to the South Pacific Ocean's low latitudes.

Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse's Northern Hemisphere path of annularity and Northern Hemisphere-Southern Hemisphere path of partiality: Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak (NASA's GSFC), via NASA Eclipse Web Site

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse details: Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC, via NASA Eclipse Web Site @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplot1901/SE1937Dec02A.GIF

Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937, annular solar eclipse's Northern Hemisphere path of annularity and Northern Hemisphere-Southern Hemisphere path of partiality: Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak (NASA's GSFC), via NASA Eclipse Web Site @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSEmap/1901-2000/1937-12-02.gif

For further information:

Espenak, Fred. "Annular Solar Eclipse of 1937 Dec 02." EclipseWise > Solar Eclipses > Solar Eclipse Links > Decade Pages of Solar Eclipses > Solar Eclipses: 1931-1940.
Available @ http://www.eclipsewise.com/solar/SEprime/1901-2000/SE1937Dec02Aprime.html

Espenak, Fred. "Annular Solar Eclipse of 1937 Dec 02." NASA Eclipse Web Site > Solar Eclipses > Decade Tables of Solar Eclipses > Solar Eclipses: 1931-1940.
Available @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplot1901/SE1937Dec02A.GIF

Espenak, Fred. "Glossary of Solar Eclipse Terms." NASA Eclipse Web Site.
Available @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/help/SEglossary.html

Espenak, Fred. "Key to Solar Eclipse Global Maps." NASA Eclipse Web Site > Solar Eclipses.
Available @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplotkey.html

Espenak, Fred. "Solar Eclipse Figures." NASA Eclipse Web Site.
Available @ https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OHres/SEfigurekeyP.html

Marriner, Derdriu. "June 8, 1937, Total Solar Eclipse Was First of Two 1937 Solar Eclipses." Earth and Space News. Wednesday, June 30, 2021.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/06/june-8-1937-total-solar-eclipse-was.html

Marriner, Derdriu. "Dec. 3, 1918, Annular Eclipse Was Second of Two 1918 Solar Eclipses." Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2021/12/dec-3-1918-annular-eclipse-was-second.html

TheSkyLive. "Solar Eclipse of December 2 1937." TheSkyLive > Solar Eclipses > Solar Eclipses Browse by decade: 1930-1939.
Available @ https://theskylive.com/solar-eclipse?id=1937-12-02

Time and Date. "December 2–3, 1937 Annular Solar Eclipse." Time and Date > Sun & Moon > Eclipses.
Available @ https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/1937-december-2

Walker, John. "Lunar Perigee and Apogee Calculator." Fourmilab Switzerland > Earth and Moon Viewer and Solar System Explorer.
Available @ https://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html