Total Lunar Eclipse of 2004 May 04
Fred Espenak
Key to Lunar Eclipse Figure (below)
Introduction
The Total Lunar Eclipse of 2004 May 04 is visible from the following geographic regions:
- South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia
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 2004 May 04 at 20:31:17 TD (20:30:13 UT1). This is 1.3 days before the Moon reaches perigee. During the eclipse, the Moon is in the constellation Libra. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 1006.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 131 and is number 33 of 72 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.
The total lunar eclipse of 2004 May 04 is preceded two weeks earlier by a partial solar eclipse on 2004 Apr 19.
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 64.5 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 131 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Total Lunar Eclipse of 2004 May 04 .