Solar Eclipse Prime Page
Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 (0980 Feb 16 BCE)
Fred Espenak
Introduction
The Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 (0980 Feb 16 BCE) is visible from the geographic regions shown on the map to the right. Click on the map to enlarge it. For an explanation of the features appearing in the map, see Key to Solar Eclipse Maps.
The instant of greatest eclipse takes place on -0979 Feb 16 at 14:18:12 TD (07:23:00 UT1). This is 4.3 days before the Moon reaches apogee. During the eclipse, the Sun is in the constellation Pisces. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of -35891.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 34 and is number 53 of 86 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 solar eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 is a relatively long annular eclipse with a duration at greatest eclipse of 06m21s. It has an eclipse magnitude of 0.9509.
The annular solar eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 is preceded two weeks earlier by a penumbral lunar eclipse on -0979 Feb 02, and it is followed two weeks later by a penumbral lunar eclipse on -0979 Mar 03.
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., UT1 = TD - ΔT). ΔT has a value of 24911.4 seconds for this eclipse. The uncertainty in ΔT is 614.0 seconds corresponding to a standard error in longitude of the eclipse path of ± 2.57°.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Orthographic Map: Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 - global map of eclipse visibility
- Google Map: Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 - interactive map of the eclipse path
- Path Table: Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 - coordinates of the central line and path limits
- Circumstances Table: Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 - eclipse times for hundreds of cities
- Saros 34 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Annular Solar Eclipse of -0979 Feb 16 .