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Ephemeris: 10/27/2023 – Report on October 14th’s partial solar eclipse and looking forward

October 27, 2023 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, October 27th. Today the Sun will be up for 10 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 6:38, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:15. The Moon, 1 day before full, will set at 7:55 tomorrow morning.

Two weeks ago tomorrow we had a partial eclipse of the Sun. Unfortunately around here it was pretty cloudy. I went to the Betsie Valley District Library knowing it was cloudy and brought a program to talk about mainly eclipses that I’ve seen and a preview of next April’s eclipse, which would be even better than the one we had two weeks ago. Towards the end of my talk I was looking out towards my audience and windows. I was the only one who could see out those windows, because I was facing that direction and I saw shadows. Sure enough the Sun came out, so we all piled out with our eclipse glasses and saw the maximum of the eclipse for maybe 15 minutes before it clouded up again. So the event was indeed a success.

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

Eclipse Map
The paths are maximum for eclipse for both October 14th’s annular eclipse, going down from upper left to lower right and April 8th next year’s total solar eclipse the path from lower left to upper right. As you can see, the total eclipse path will pass through Indiana and Ohio among other states The path of totality will just clip Michigan’s southeastern corner, most of which is actually in Lake Erie. It is well within a day’s drive from Northern Michigan. However, the chances are for better weather the farther south one goes. That’s a statistical chance, but no guarantees.

Below is a file to show April 8, 2024 eclipse path on Google Earth. It can be saved or used to bring up Google Earth. The file was created using Stellarium.

http://ephemeris.bjmoler.org/solareclipse-2024-4-8.kml

Categories: Astronomical Event, Ephemeris Program, Solar Eclipse, Uncategorized