Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Solar eclipse of December 4, 1983

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Nature
  
Annular

Magnitude
  
0.9666

Max. width of band
  
131 km (81 mi)

Start date
  
December 4, 1983

Gamma
  
0.4015

Duration
  
241 sec (4 m 1 s)

Greatest eclipse
  
12:31:15

Solar eclipse of December 4, 1983

An annular solar eclipse occurred on December 4, 1983. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.

Contents

Solar eclipses of 1982-1985

Each member in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.

Note: Partial solar eclipses on January 25, 1982 and July 20, 1982 occur in the previous lunar year eclipse set.

Saros 132

It is a part of Saros cycle 132, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, containing 71 events. The series started with partial solar eclipse on August 13, 1208. It contains annular eclipses from March 17, 1569 through March 12, 2146, hybrid on March 23, 2164 and April 3, 2183 and total eclipses from April 14, 2200 through June 19, 2308. The series ends at member 71 as a partial eclipse on September 25, 2470. The longest duration of annular was 6 minutes, 56 seconds on May 9, 1641, and totality will be 2 minutes, 14 seconds on June 8, 2290.

Inex series

This eclipse is a part of the long period inex cycle, repeating at alternating nodes, every 358 synodic months (≈ 10,571.95 days, or 29 years minus 20 days). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee). However, groupings of 3 inex cycles (≈ 87 years minus 2 months) comes close (≈ 1,151.02 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.

Metonic series

The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days).

References

Solar eclipse of December 4, 1983 Wikipedia