Solar eclipse of April 20, 2023

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Solar eclipse of April 20, 2023
SE2023Apr20H.gif
classification
Type Hybrid
area Southeast Asia , Australia , Philippines , New Zealand
Hybrid: Indonesia , Australia , Papua New Guinea
Saros cycle 129 (52 of 80)
Gamma value −0.3951
Greatest eclipse
Duration 1 minute 16.1 seconds
place Timor Sea south of East Timor
location 9 ° 35 ′  S , 125 ° 28 ′  E Coordinates: 9 ° 35 ′  S , 125 ° 28 ′  E
time April 20, 2023 4:16:38   UT
size 1.0132

The hybrid solar eclipse of April 20, 2023 is total for almost the entire course. It begins in the Indian Ocean and after just a few seconds of ring-shaped phase, the size of the moon is sufficient to completely cover the sun. The umbra path runs north of Australia . A few minutes before the end of the eclipse in the Pacific, it becomes ring-shaped again. The total duration of 1 minute and 16 seconds is quite long for a hybrid eclipse, it is the longest hybrid eclipse of the Saros cycle 129. However, the previous hybrid eclipse of November 3, 2013 with a total duration of 1 minute and 40 seconds was still clear longer.

The partial phase of the eclipse can be seen in much of Southeast Asia, all of Australia , the North Island of New Zealand and Micronesia .

course

The eclipse begins at 2:37 UT in the southern Indian Ocean about 300 kilometers northwest of Île Kerguelen , the main Kerguelen island . A ring-shaped phase can be observed for a few seconds in an extremely narrow corridor at the beginning of the darkness. After the shadow has covered about 500 kilometers in a northeasterly direction, the apparent sizes of the sun and moon are exactly the same, from this point on the eclipse is total, as the apparent size of the moon continues to increase in the further course of the eclipse up to its maximum.

The umbra hits land for the first time in the north-west of Australia on the North West Cape peninsula , where the shadow path just touches the Australian continent. In the shadow zone lies the Cape Range National Park and the city of Exmouth , where the moon completely covers the sun for about 54 seconds. The central line then runs exactly over Barrow Island before the umbra moves northeast across the Indian Ocean. Shortly before the umbra reaches land again in East Timor, the maximum of the eclipse occurs in the Timor Sea at 4:16 UT with a totality of 1 minute and 16 seconds. In East Timor, the cities of Viqueque and Lospalos are in the totality zone. In his future to the northeast across the Banda Sea the umbra encounters the Indonesian islands Kisar and Damar and later to the Watubela archipelago counting Kasiui . In the Sebakor Bay off the Bomberai Peninsula , the umbra reaches the Papua Barat province in the Indonesian part of New Guinea . The umbra in the Cenderawasih Bay reaches the sea again via the isthmus that connects the Vogelkopf peninsula with New Guinea . The islands of Yapen and Biak are in the umbra zone, with the capital of the latter island being almost exactly on the central line and having a totality of 1 minute and 4 seconds.

Kosrae in the central Pacific misses the umbra just to the south, meanwhile the direction of the expansion of the shadow corridor has changed from northeast to east. The umbra also almost hits the Ebon Atoll , in this case it passes north. About 250 kilometers to the east, the apparent size of the moon is exactly the same as that of the sun, so that the darkness is again ring-shaped for the remaining 1000 kilometers until the shadow axis separates from the earth's surface.

Web links

Commons : Solar eclipse of April 20, 2023  - Collection of images, videos and audio files