Future Eclipse Paths On Internet

Presently, the NASA eclipse bulletins are published 12 to 18 months before each eclipse. This will soon be increased to 24 months or more. However, there have been a growing number of requests for eclipse path data with an even greater lead time. To accommodate the demand, predictions have been generated for all central solar eclipses from 1995 through 2000 using the JPL DE/LE 200 ephemerides. All predictions use the Moon's the center of mass; no corrections have been made to adjust for center of figure. The value used for the Moon's mean radius is k=0.272281. The umbral path characteristics have been predicted at 2 minute intervals of time compared to the 6 minute interval used in Fifty Year Canon of Solar Eclipses: 1986-2035 [Espenak, 1987]. This should provide enough detail for making preliminary plots of the path on larger scale maps. Note that positive latitudes are north and positive longitudes are west.

The paths for the following seven eclipses are currently available via the Internet:

The tables can be accessed with Mosaic through SDAC home page, or directly here.

Comments, corrections or suggestions should be sent to Fred Espenak either via regular or e-mail (u32fe@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov). For Internet related problems, please contact Joe Gurman (gurman@uvsp.gsfc.nasa.gov). Either one of us can also be contacted for more detailed descriptions of formats and directories or instructions for downloading files using a Web client such as Mosaic, or via anonymous ftp.

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