Solar eclipse of May 10, 1994

Solar eclipse of May 10, 1994
Solar eclipse of May 10, 1994
	Partial from Bismarck, North Dakota, USA
	Map
Type of eclipse
Nature	Annular
Gamma	0.4077
Magnitude	0.9431
Maximum eclipse
Duration	373 s (6 min 13 s)
Coordinates	41°30′N 84°06′W / 41.5°N 84.1°W
Max. width of band	230 km (140 mi)
Times (UTC)
Greatest eclipse	17:12:27
References
Saros	128 (57 of 73)
Catalog # (SE5000)	9495

An annular solar eclipse occurred on Tuesday, May 10, 1994. It was visible over a wide swath of North America, from Baja California across the Midwest of the United States up through Ontario and Nova Scotia in Canada.

The Annular Eclipse of May 10, 1994

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. The eclipse is either total or annular. In a total eclipse, the moon's size from earth is large enough to block all of the disk of the sun.

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), that is there is a ring of the sun around the dark moon. An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.

The path of annularity crossed four states of Mexico (Baja California Sur, Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua), the United States, the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Nova Scotia and the southeastern tip of Quebec, Azores Islands except Santa Maria Island, and part of Morocco including the capital city Rabat. Niagara Falls was also covered by the path of annularity.

Images

Related eclipses

Solar eclipses 1993–1996

This eclipse is a member of a semester series. An eclipse 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.^[1]

Solar eclipse series sets from 1993 to 1996
Descending node			Ascending node
Saros	Map	Gamma	Saros	Map	Gamma
118	May 21, 1993 Partial	1.1372	123	November 13, 1993 Partial	−1.0411
128 Partial in Bismarck, ND, USA	May 10, 1994 Annular	0.4077	133 Totality in Bolivia	November 3, 1994 Total	−0.3522
138	April 29, 1995 Annular	−0.3382	143 Totality in Dundlod, India	October 24, 1995 Total	0.3518
148	April 17, 1996 Partial	−1.058	153	October 12, 1996 Partial	1.1227

Saros 128

This eclipse is a part of Saros series 128, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, and containing 73 events. The series started with a partial solar eclipse on August 29, 984 AD. It contains total eclipses from May 16, 1417 through June 18, 1471; hybrid eclipses from June 28, 1489 through July 31, 1543; and annular eclipses from August 11, 1561 through July 25, 2120. The series ends at member 73 as a partial eclipse on November 1, 2282. Its eclipses are tabulated in three columns; every third eclipse in the same column is one exeligmos apart, so they all cast shadows over approximately the same parts of the Earth.

The longest duration of totality was produced by member 27 at 1 minutes, 45 seconds on June 7, 1453, and the longest duration of annularity was produced by member 48 at 8 minutes, 35 seconds on February 1, 1832. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moon’s descending node of orbit.^[2]

Series members 47–68 occur between 1801 and 2200:
47	48	49
January 21, 1814	February 1, 1832	February 12, 1850
50	51	52
February 23, 1868	March 5, 1886	March 17, 1904
53	54	55
March 28, 1922	April 7, 1940	April 19, 1958
56	57	58
April 29, 1976	May 10, 1994	May 20, 2012
59	60	61
June 1, 2030	June 11, 2048	June 22, 2066
62	63	64
July 3, 2084	July 15, 2102	July 25, 2120
65	66	67
August 5, 2138	August 16, 2156	August 27, 2174
68
September 6, 2192

Metonic cycle

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). All eclipses in this table occur at the Moon's descending node.

21 eclipse events between July 22, 1971 and July 22, 2047
July 22	May 9–11	February 26–27	December 14–15	October 2–3
116	118	120	122	124
July 22, 1971	May 11, 1975	February 26, 1979	December 15, 1982	October 3, 1986
126	128	130	132	134
July 22, 1990	May 10, 1994	February 26, 1998	December 14, 2001	October 3, 2005
136	138	140	142	144
July 22, 2009	May 10, 2013	February 26, 2017	December 14, 2020	October 2, 2024
146	148	150	152	154
July 22, 2028	May 9, 2032	February 27, 2036	December 15, 2039	October 3, 2043
156
July 22, 2047