Total Lunar Eclipse of 1972 Jan 30
Fred Espenak
Key to Lunar Eclipse Figure (below)
Introduction
The Total Lunar Eclipse of 1972 Jan 30 is visible from the following geographic regions:
- Asia, Australia, Pacific, Americas
The diagram to the right depicts the Moon's path with respect to Earth's umbral and penumbral shadows. Below it is a map showing the geographic regions of eclipse visibility. Click on the figure to enlarge it. For an explanation of the features appearing in the figure, see Key to Lunar Eclipse Figures.
The instant of greatest eclipse takes place on 1972 Jan 30 at 10:54:05 TD (10:53:23 UT1). This is 6.6 days before the Moon reaches apogee. During the eclipse, the Moon is in the constellation Cancer. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 607.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 133 and is number 24 of 71 eclipses in the series. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moons descending node. The Moon moves northward with respect to the node with each succeeding eclipse in the series and gamma increases.
This is a very shallow total eclipse. It has an umbral eclipse magnitude of only 1.0497 and a duration of totality lasting 34.8 minutes. Gamma has a value of -0.4273.
The total lunar eclipse of 1972 Jan 30 is preceded two weeks earlier by a annular solar eclipse on 1972 Jan 16.
These eclipses all take place during a single eclipse season.
The eclipse predictions are given in both Terrestrial Dynamical Time (TD) and Universal Time (UT1). The parameter ΔT is used to convert between these two times (i.e., TD = UT1 + ΔT). ΔT has a value of 42.3 seconds for this eclipse.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Detailed Lunar Eclipse Figure - eclipse geometry diagram and map of eclipse visibility (Key to Figure)
- Saros 133 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Total Lunar Eclipse of 1972 Jan 30 .