Solar eclipse of March 7, 1951


An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's ascending node of orbit between Wednesday, March 7 and Thursday, March 8, 1951, with a magnitude of 0.9896. 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. An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide. The Moon's apparent diameter was near the average diameter because it occurred 5.5 days after perigee and 7.4 days before apogee.
Annularity was visible from New Zealand on March 8, and northern Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and San Andrés Island in Colombia on March 7. A partial eclipse was visible for parts of Oceania, western South America, southern North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Broadcast

This was the first solar eclipse broadcast live on television. American stations such as WCBS-TV, WNET, and NBC News broadcast it live. The path of annularity did not pass the United States of America, and only a partial solar eclipse was visible from the southeastern half of the country. For example, in New York City, a partial solar eclipse occurred right before the sunset, whose gratitude was only 17%, meaning only 8% of the total disk area was covered at the peak of the eclipse. The curator of the Hayden Planetarium in New York also asked "don’t get people too excited about it" in an interview with The New York Times, but many TV stations still incorporated the solar eclipse into their regular afternoon schedule and also some new TV technology was inaugurated.

Eclipse details

Shown below are two tables displaying details about this particular solar eclipse. The first table outlines times at which the Moon's penumbra or umbra attains the specific parameter, and the second table describes various other parameters pertaining to this eclipse.
EventTime
First Penumbral External Contact1951 March 7 at 18:04:26.8 UTC
First Umbral External Contact1951 March 7 at 19:05:55.2 UTC
First Central Line1951 March 7 at 19:06:44.2 UTC
First Umbral Internal Contact1951 March 7 at 19:07:33.2 UTC
First Penumbral Internal Contact1951 March 7 at 20:12:35.1 UTC
Equatorial Conjunction1951 March 7 at 20:39:08.0 UTC
Ecliptic Conjunction1951 March 7 at 20:51:00.5 UTC
Greatest Eclipse1951 March 7 at 20:53:39.9 UTC
Last Penumbral Internal Contact1951 March 7 at 21:35:03.7 UTC
Last Umbral Internal Contact1951 March 7 at 22:39:53.5 UTC
Last Central Line1951 March 7 at 22:40:45.3 UTC
Greatest Duration1951 March 7 at 22:40:45.3 UTC
Last Umbral External Contact1951 March 7 at 22:41:37.2 UTC
Last Penumbral External Contact1951 March 7 at 23:43:05.1 UTC

ParameterValue
Eclipse Magnitude0.98959
Eclipse Obscuration0.97930
Gamma−0.24196
Sun Right Ascension23h10m14.1s
Sun Declination-05°20'18.6"
Sun Semi-Diameter16'06.8"
Sun Equatorial Horizontal Parallax08.9"
Moon Right Ascension23h10m40.8s
Moon Declination-05°32'31.4"
Moon Semi-Diameter15'42.0"
Moon Equatorial Horizontal Parallax0°57'37.1"
ΔT29.6 s

Eclipse season

This eclipse is part of an eclipse season, a period, roughly every six months, when eclipses occur. Only two eclipse seasons occur each year, and each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months later; thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. In the sequence below, each eclipse is separated by a fortnight. The first and last eclipse in this sequence is separated by one synodic month.
February 21
Descending node 		March 7
Ascending node 		March 23
Descending node
Penumbral lunar eclipse
Lunar Saros 103		Annular solar eclipse
Solar Saros 129		Penumbral lunar eclipse
Lunar Saros 141

Related eclipses

Eclipses in 1951

Metonic

Tzolkinex

Half-Saros

Tritos

Solar Saros 129

Inex

Triad