Total Lunar Eclipse of 1985 Oct 28
Fred Espenak
Key to Lunar Eclipse Figure (below)
Introduction
The Total Lunar Eclipse of 1985 Oct 28 is visible from the following geographic regions:
- Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Pacific
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 1985 Oct 28 at 17:43:17 TD (17:42:22 UT1). This is 1.2 days before the Moon reaches apogee. During the eclipse, the Moon is in the constellation Aries. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 777.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 126 and is number 43 of 70 eclipses in the series. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moons ascending node. The Moon moves southward with respect to the node with each succeeding eclipse in the series and gamma decreases.
This is a very shallow total eclipse. It has an umbral eclipse magnitude of only 1.0736 and a duration of totality lasting 43.9 minutes. Gamma has a value of -0.4022.
The total lunar eclipse of 1985 Oct 28 is followed two weeks later by a total solar eclipse on 1985 Nov 12.
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 54.8 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 126 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Total Lunar Eclipse of 1985 Oct 28 .