How the eclipse on Oct. 14 might look over Los Alamos. Courtesy/mattiaverga on pixabay
By PHILIP DALY, BSc(Hons) MSc
Tucson, Ariz.
‘Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and … fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don’t any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while dolphins prefer the mountains.’ – So said Archilochus, a Greek poet and philosopher of the 7th century BCE. What, one wonders, had caused such terror? A solar eclipse and October sees an annular eclipse of the Sun pass directly over Los Alamos which lies within the 125-mile wide path of annularity. Only a select few—about 0.4 percent of the entire world population—will be in such an exalted geographic location so make the most of it.
An annular Solar eclipse forms when the Moon doesn’t quite occult the entire solar disk leaving a circle of light around the edge. At the time of this eclipse the Solar disk will be 32.04 minutes of arc across and the Lunar disk 30.01 minutes of arc. That difference, 2.03 arc minutes or one-thirtieth of a degree, creates the annulus that is known as the ‘Ring of Fire’.
For Los Alamos residents, the partial eclipse will begin at 9:13 a.m. Oct. 14 with annularity beginning at 10:35 a.m. The peak of annularity will see 89.72 percent of the Solar disk obscured at 10:37 a.m. The annular eclipse ends at 10:38 a.m. giving a total of approximately 3 minutes of annularity. The partial eclipse continues until 12:09 p.m. Eclipse duration is 2 hours 56 minutes and will be visible anywhere over the city. More precise times are given in the table.
Interestingly, the peak magnitude (brightness) will be +0.95 whereas the Sun normally sits at a magnitude of -26.8. Since every 5 magnitudes represents a diminution of 100× in brightness, the Sun dipping at least 25 magnitudes during the whole eclipse means it loses 1005 of its lustre so is about 10 trillion times fainter!
Details:
- 9:13:16 a.m. Oct. 14, Partial Eclipse Begins, Saros Series 134;
- 10:35:20 a.m. Oct. 14, Annular Eclipse Begins, Ring of Fire;
- 10:36:51 a.m. Oct. 14, Peak Eclipse, annularity 3:03 (min:sec), mag 0.9529;
- 10:38:23 a.m. Oct. 14, Annular Eclipse Ends; and
- 12:09:04 p.m. Oct. 14, Partial Eclipse Ends.
Do not be fooled, though: never view the Sun directly (even during an eclipse) but wear suitable eye-protection no matter what mode the observation may take (telescope, binoculars, camera or naked-eye). Permanent eye damage may result if one does not use eclipse glasses (for naked-eye observing), a certified solar filter (for telescopes, binoculars or cameras) or project the image onto a nearby screen or flat ground. Solar eclipses are a wonderful experience and over 1 billion people worldwide will share in some part of this astronomical event and can be viewed safely with precautions. A good resource for safe observing is https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses/safety.