Home > Ephemeris Program, Inside Ephemeris > Ephemeris: 06/02/2025 – 50th anniversary: What’s an ephemeris anyway?

Ephemeris: 06/02/2025 – 50th anniversary: What’s an ephemeris anyway?

June 2, 2025

This is Ephemeris for Monday, June 2nd. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 22 minutes, setting at 9:22, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:59. The Moon, at first quarter today, will set at 2:25 tomorrow morning.

Today I embark on the Ephemeris program’s 51st trip around the Sun. The purpose of this program is more than giving the sunrise and sunset times, which was the station’s original request. Nowadays, one can get that from the weather app on a smartphone much more accurately than I can. From the beginning I’ve included some fact of astronomy or something visible in the sky with the naked eye or at least find to it using the naked eye stars as a guide, and visible in binoculars. That is the essence of this program. The title Ephemeris comes from the Greek and Latin meaning diary or journal. In astronomy, it is a tabular list of planet, asteroid or comet positions, as they change with time.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Today we'd call this a selfie, with me and the equipment I hauled out to Prince Edward Island for the July 10th, 1972 total solar eclipse.
Today we’d call this a selfie, with me and the equipment I hauled out to Prince Edward Island for the July 10th, 1972 total solar eclipse. This was three years before the Ephemeris program started. This was my third successful total solar eclipse out of three tries. I was to witness and report on three more total solar eclipses, and two annular eclipses during the run of the Ephemeris program.
This photograph of the diamond ring at the end of totality is my favorite.
I’ve gotten many photographs of this eclipse. This is the first time that my photographic equipment actually worked properly. The images of the Sun’s corona were great, however this photograph of the diamond ring at the end of totality is my favorite.

Categories: Ephemeris Program, Inside Ephemeris
  1. Norm Wheeler's avatar
    Norm Wheeler
    June 3, 2025 at 12:53 pm

    Thanks, Bob, for 50 years of wisdom!!

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