Nature Annular Magnitude 0.969 Max. width of band 114 km (71 mi) Start date September 11, 1969 | Gamma 0.2201 Duration 191 sec (3 m 11 s) Greatest eclipse 19:58:59 | |
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An annular solar eclipse occurred on September 11, 1969. 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.
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Solar eclipses of 1968-1971
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.
Saros 134
It is a part of Saros cycle 134, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, containing 71 events. The series started with partial solar eclipse on June 22, 1248. It contains total eclipses from October 9, 1428 through December 24, 1554 and hybrid eclipses from January 3, 1573 through June 27, 1843, and annular eclipses from July 8, 1861 through May 21, 2384. The series ends at member 71 as a partial eclipse on August 6, 2510. The longest duration of totality was 1 minutes, 30 seconds on October 9, 1428.
Tritos series
This eclipse is a part of a tritos cycle, repeating at alternating nodes every 135 synodic months (≈ 3986.63 days, or 11 years minus 1 month). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee), but groupings of 3 tritos cycles (≈ 33 years minus 3 months) come close (≈ 434.044 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.