Future Eclipse Paths on Internet
Presently, the NASA eclipse bulletins are published 18 to 24
months before each eclipse. This will soon be increased to 24
to 36 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 World-Wide Web:
The tables can be accessed with a World-Wide Web viewer through the
SDAC home page,
or directly using a URL of the form:
http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eclipse/predictions/year-month-day.html
For example, the path for the total solar eclipse of 1998 February
26 would use the above address with the string "year-month-day"
replaced with "1998-february-26". Send comments, corrections,
suggestions or requests for more detailed ftp instructions,
to Fred Espenak via e-mail (
espenak@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov/a>). For Internet-related problems, please
contact Joe Gurman (
gurman@uvsp.gsfc.nasa.gov).
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