Future Eclipse Paths on Internet

Presently, the NASA eclipse bulletins are published 18 to 24 months before each eclipse. This will soon be increased to 24 to 36 months or more. However, there have been a growing number of requests for eclipse path data with an even greater lead time. To accommodate the demand, predictions have been generated for all central solar eclipses from 1995 through 2005 using the JPL DE/LE 200 ephemerides. All predictions use the Moon's the center of mass; no corrections have been made to adjust for center of figure. The value used for the Moon's mean radius is k=0.272281. The umbral path characteristics have been predicted at 2 minute intervals of time compared to the 6 minute interval used in Fifty Year Canon of Solar Eclipses: 1986-2035 [Espenak, 1987]. This should provide enough detail for making preliminary plots of the path on larger scale maps. Note that positive latitudes are north and positive longitudes are west.

The paths for the following fifteen eclipses are currently available via the Internet:

The tables can be accessed with a World-Wide Web viewer through the SDAC home page, or directly using a URL of the form:

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEpubs/predictions/year-month-day.html

For example, the eclipse path of 1999 August 11 would use the above address with the string "year-month-day" replaced by "1999-august-11". Send comments, corrections, suggestions or requests for more detailed 'ftp' instructions, to Fred Espenak via e-mail (espenak@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov). For Internet related problems, please contact Joe Gurman (gurman@uvsp.nascom.nasa.gov).

Next section Table of Contents