How Rare is the April 2024 Eclipse?

how

rare

is the

eclipse

of April

2024

this is the Saras inex Panorama each square represents one of the 8,000 solar

eclipse

s of the years 128 BC. C. to 2161 AD. C. no two eclipses are alike for a total solar eclipse like the April

2024

eclipse to occur three times. The independent motions of the Moon and Earth must coincide almost perfectly first, and obviously the Moon has to be between the Sun and the Earth. Land. This happens on average every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.9 seconds. This period is known as CTIC month of Of course, we do not see eclipses every 29 days, this is because the Moon's orbit around the Earth is tilted relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, so even if the Moon appears to be between the Sun and Earth in an aerial perspective.

For an eclipse to occur, the Moon has to be efficiently close to the Earth's orbital plane twice per revolution. The Moon passes through Earth's orbital plane at points called nodes, allowing for the possibility of an eclipse, this is where things start to get crazy. For an eclipse to actually occur, the Moon has to be between the Earth and the Sun in our aerial view and close to one of its two nodes so that it lines up well with the plane. of the Earth's orbit because the plane of the moon's orbit slowly wobbles the location of the nodes changes slowly throughout the year relative to the fixed background of the stars this slow nodal procession means that one of the two nodes align between the Earth and the Sun on average every 173,000 days, a little less than half a year, this creates on average two eclipse seasons per year with an interval of just under 6 months.

The eclipse before the April 8, 2024 eclipse was on October 14, 2023, however, there was a gap of 177 days. These two eclipses look very different: the April 2024 eclipse is a total eclipse, while the October 2023 eclipse is an annular eclipse where the moon does not completely block the sun clearly. In both cases, the moon passes directly between the Sun and Earth in 3D space, but the apparent eclipse The size of the Moon has changed, this is because the Moon's roughly elliptical orbit brings the Moon closer and further away from Earth to make things nice and complicated. The Moon's inclined orbital plane also rotates slowly.

Changing the location of the Moon's closest and farthest points around the Earth. but not at the same rotation speed as the lunar nodes, all this generates three independent movements that must come together almost perfectly for similar eclipses to occur. First we have CTIC month taking the Moon between the Earth and the Sun in our aerial view. Second. They have the nodes through which the moon passes through the orbital plane of the Earth. This cycle repeats every 27 days, 5 hours, 5 minutes, and 35.8 seconds on average and is known as the draconic month. Finally, it lasts an average of 27 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, and 33.2 seconds for the moon to make a round trip from the closest point along its elliptical orbit and vice versa this is known as an anomalous month taking all this into account how long it will take to see an eclipse similar to the one on April 8 2024 if we move forward one CTIC month to May 8, the Moon will once again be between the Earth and the Sun in our aerial view, but 1.85 draconic months will have passed, meaning the Moon has moved too far away from the orbital plane of the Earth for an eclipse to occur. that our node and the moon have finally separated 1.72 anomalous months have passed, which means that the apparent size of the moon has also changed, advancing another CTIC month, our Cycles separate further with two CTIC months corresponding to 2 .17 draconic months and 2.14 three anomalous months We see a reasonably close alignment after 12 CTIC months with 12 CTIC months equaling almost 13 draconic months and indeed there will be an eclipse on March 29, 2025; however, since our cycles do not fully align, it will only be a partial eclipse, how?

Much later in time we have to move forward for our three Cycles to align again, as in April 2024 it is surprising that humans have known the answer for at least 2000 years. This ancient Babylonian tablet shows a record of solar eclipses from 347 11 to 258 BC. C. each column advances exactly with the answer to our problem 223 CTIC months, as the Babylonians discovered through careful observation, after 223 CTIC months or approximately 18.03 years, our draconic and anomalous CTIC months re-align producing a very eclipse similar this 18- The period of the year is called sarus. Each column of the sarus inex Panorama shows a sar.

A series of very similar eclipses separated by 223 synotic months. The April 2024 eclipse is part of the Sara 139 series. The next eclipse in this series will occur in April 2042. However, the length of the sarus does not align well with the Earth's rotation, which equals 6585 32 days. This means that consecutive eclipses and Assara series will not occur in the same place on Earth. Most of the April 2042 eclipse will occur over the Pacific Ocean next year. The eclipse in SARS 139 will occur in April 2060 in Africa and will eventually return to the US in May 2078. Now this doesn't mean you have to wait 54 years to see another total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States.

Right now there are 40 different ones. Interestingly, the Sara series is in progress as the CTIC and draconic months don't exactly line up. The Sara series doesn't go on forever. Saros 139 will last around 1300 years starting in 1501 and ending in 2763 if we look beyond the 223 CTIC months. that make up the sarus for a stronger alignment between our movements, we will eventually land at 358 cic months, which is almost equal to 388.13 Predicting eclipses for many thousands of years each row of the inex of the SARS Panorama shows the eclipses in a single inex series from one inex corresponds to 383.51 anomalous months and is not an integer value, not all eclipses in an inex will often look the same and every third eclipse will be a total eclipse starting with the April 2024 eclipse and moving three inex steps To the left and five Sara steps down, we find the next total solar eclipse of August 2027, which will be visible mainly in parts of North Africa in the Middle East, moving another three INX steps to the left, we come across the total eclipse of November 2030, which will spend most of its time over the Indian Ocean in total from the end of the year 2024 to the year 2050 there will be 56 solar eclipses 17 of these will be total solar eclipses and of these only two will be visible in the Contiguous United States one in 2044 and one in 2045 I really love the Saros inex Panorama but it's almost impossible to find.

I made my own version as part of making this video. You can purchase a poster at the link in the description below or get a PDF version when you join the Wels Lab patreon. Panorama doesn't tell you everything about eclipses, but it captures the regularities and confusing irregularities of solar eclipses in a truly beautiful. Getting this image together felt like an archaeological dig. The idea for the Panorama came from Dutch amateur astronomer George Vandenberg. Vandenberg was trying to make sense of the Aer Cannon. Eclipses An incredible 1887 catalog of 8,000 solar eclipses published by Austrian astronomer Theodore Von Auler widely recognized as one of the greatest computational feats of his time.

Aer's book has some really beautiful figures. I also made a poster showing two of these showing all the eclipse paths from 2008 to 2 53 Vandenberg Panorama is only available in a 1955 book which is incredibly

rare

, as far as I can tell there are no copies for sale on Internet and the closest copy for me seems to be literally in the Library of Congress after Briefly debating a trip to DC, I decided to make my own version of the Panorama for this video, as far as I know this is the only high resolution version of the Saras INX Panorama available.