Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Friday, May 19th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 58 minutes, setting at 9:08, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:09. The Moon is new today, and won’t be visible.

We are five months from witnessing a solar eclipse. That’s five lunar months, of approximately 29 and a half days. Solar eclipses can only happen at new moon, when the Moon is in the same direction as the Sun. Today, at 11:53 am, the instant of new moon, the Moon will be about two and a half of its diameters north of the Sun, so it won’t create a solar eclipse for us in Northern Michigan, or for any other place on the Earth for that matter. For locations south of Michigan, that Moon will appear somewhat farther from the Sun. For locations north of us, the Moon will appear closer to the Sun. But nobody will get a solar eclipse today. We will have to wait for the new moon of October 14th to see an eclipse of the Sun.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT –4 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The orbit of the Moon is tilted by about 5 degrees from the orbital plane of the Earth, so there’s a solar eclipse visible somewhere on the planet one out of six new moons on average. If our moon orbited near the earth’s equator like most major moons of their planet, eclipses would be much rarer than they are now, and only occur around the spring or autumn equinoxes. That’s because the Moon’s orbit would be tilted, on average, of 23½ degrees to Earth’s orbital plane.

The new moon’s position north of the Sun at 11:53 am EDT. The yellow line is the ecliptic, which is the path of the Sun against the stars, or Earth’s orbital plane projected on the sky. If one could see the stars in the daytime, the Sun and Moon are below the Pleiades star cluster, which will make their first appearance in the evening sky this fall. While 11:53 am is only 7 minutes from noon EDT, for our location, local apparent solar noon, when the Sun is actually due south, isn’t until 1:39 pm. Our Eastern Daylight Saving Time meridian is off the coast of the US in the Atlantic Ocean at longitude 60 degrees west. We are located between 85 and 86 degrees west. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).