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On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the
Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth.
The solar eclipse that takes place on Wednesday, July 22,
2009 will be a total eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 1.080 that will be
visible from a narrow corridor through northern India, eastern Nepal, Bhutan,
central China and the Pacific Ocean (Ryukyu Islands, Marshall Islands and
Kiribati. Totality will be visible in many cities such as Surat, Varanasi,
Patna, Thimphu, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Shanghai. A partial
eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra,
including most of South East Asia and north-eastern Oceania.
This solar eclipse is the
longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the twenty-first century.
Totality will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds, with the maximum eclipse
occurring at 02:35:21 UTC about 100 km south of the Bonin Islands, southeast of
Japan.
Notable times and
coordinates
| Event |
Time (UTC) |
| Beginning of the general eclipse |
23:58:18 (Jul 21) |
| Beginning of the total eclipse |
00:51:16 |
| Beginning of the central eclipse |
00:54:31 |
| Greatest eclipse |
02:35:21 |
| End of the central eclipse |
04:16:13 |
| End of the total eclipse |
04:19:26 |
| End of the general eclipse |
05:12:25 |
Type of the eclipse
| Nature of the eclipses |
Total |
| Gamma |
0.0696 |
| Magnitude |
1.0799 |
| Duration at greatest eclipse point |
398 s (6 min 38 s) at 02:35:21 UTC, in the
Pacific Ocean:
 24°12′36″N,
144°06′24″E |
| Maximum width of band |
258.4 km |
"Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak,
NASA's GSFC"
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Wim van Driel
Paris Observatory,
Astronomer
Wim van Driel is an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in
France. Over the past 25 years he has taught astronomy classes at the
Universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Leiden (Netherlands), Paris VII
(France) and Tokyo (Japan), was director of the Nançay radio observatory
(France), and has published more than 100 astronomical papers.
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