Solar eclipse of May 12, 1706
| Solar eclipse of May 12, 1706 | |
|---|---|
|
|
| classification | |
| Type | Total |
| area | North and West Africa , Europe , North Asia Total: Canary Islands , Morocco , Spain , France , Germany , Poland , Siberia , Manchuria |
| Saros cycle | 133 (28 of 72) |
| Gamma value | 0.5984 |
| Greatest eclipse | |
| Duration | 4 minutes 6 seconds |
| place | Germany |
| location | 51 ° 30 ′ N , 15 ° 12 ′ E |
| size | 1.0591 |
The solar eclipse of May 12, 1706 was a total solar eclipse that occurred during the War of the Spanish Succession and crossed Spain, France, and Germany. Therefore, at that time it was considered to be a symbol and harbinger of the decline of Louis XIV , who was also known as the Sun King , "darkened" by the Great Alliance .
description
The eclipse was visible in North and West Africa, in all of Europe and its islands, in Asia including Siberia and large parts of the Middle East, as well as in a small part of North America and the northern islands. It was also visible over the Atlantic. To a very small extent it also appeared in the southern hemisphere, but almost exclusively over the ocean. It belongs to the Saros cycle 133.
The up to 242 km wide umbra area over stressed areas 250 km northwest of the Cape Verde island of Santo Antao (then a Portuguese colony) in the Atlantic, the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands , Morocco , including Casablanca , Rabat , Tangier and Tetouan , Gibraltar , Spain including Malaga , Valencia and Barcelona , France with Grenoble , Lyon , Nîmes and Marseille , Switzerland , Munich , Danzig (today Gdańsk, Poland ), the Masuria , large parts of the Baltic Sea , Saint Petersburg , which was newly founded at the time, in Russia , parts of the Russian north including Samoyed and Yakut regions to Manchuria . The shadow was widest between Saxony and Lower Silesia at 51.5 ° N, 15.2 ° E at 10:35 am Central European Time and lasted more than four minutes.
The eclipse showed 50% coverage in Burkina Faso , Mali , Songhaeich , Libyan Benghazi , Ankara , Sinop , Caspian areas and parts of Mongolia , and on the other side of the umbra on the northeastern islands and east coast of Greenland . There was a 75% coverage in places like Norway , Lapland and Semlja , and on the other side Bissau , Syracuse in Sicily and Bucharest . Areas with 25% solar coverage included Benin , Egypt, and Babylon in Iraq (then called Mesopotamia). On the edge of the dark area were Gabon , Darfur , Nubia , the north of the Arabian Peninsula, Persia , Nepal , Assam and the Manchurian-controlled Yunnan .
The eclipse began in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and ended with sunset in Siberia, Korea and China. The subsolar point was in Nubia.
Scientific and historical importance
The eclipse of May 12, 1706 was the first for which the geographic course was calculated in advance. Unlike the famous solar eclipse of May 3, 1715 , which Edmond Halley had predicted , this one in England was not total . On the basis of a letter from Captain Stanyan from Bern to the Royal Society, John Flamsteed reported that, to the best of his knowledge, red stripes had been observed for the first time after total eclipse before the appearance of the solar sphere, which he wrongly attributed to a lunar atmosphere. Even Johann Jakob Scheuchzer reported on the "red stripes" of darkness that he brought a lunar atmosphere in context.
The solar eclipse also coincided with the Alliance's victory at Barcelona and the siege of Turin in the War of the Spanish Succession , and was widely interpreted as the "eclipse of the Sun King", that is, the downfall of King of France Louis XIV , while the French court the Officially, eclipse was only considered a scientific phenomenon.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Solar eclipse of May 12 NASA
- ↑ Solar Saros 133 NASA Eclipse web site
- ↑ The total solar eclipses in Germany from 1706 to 2135
- ^ Robert H. van Gent: Early 18th Century Maps of Solar Eclipse Paths
- ↑ a b W. T. Lynn: The total eclipse of May 12th, 1706 The Observatory, Volume 8, pages 270-271 (1885)
- ↑ Scheuchzer's letter , Philosophical Transactions, 1708. It says in Latin: "Quandoquidem circa Lunam fulgor apparuit rutilans, a radiis per athmosphaeram Lunae refractis ortus" German: "Reddish rays appeared around the moon, broken by the lunar atmosphere."
- ^ "The Sun in an Eclipse" (1707) - University of Western Ontario with historical notes.
- ^ Liberation of Barcelona 1706
- ^ Hendrik Ziegler: Image Battles under Louis XIV: Some Reflections pages 32-35, from Tony Claydon, Charles-Édouard Levillain (ed.): "Louis XIV outside in: images of the Sun King beyond France", 1661-1715, Farnham 2015.
