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 2005 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 fifteen eclipses are currently available
via the Internet:
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 eclipse path of 1999 August 11 would use the
above address with the string "year-month-day" replaced
by "1999-august-11". Send comments, corrections, suggestions
or requests for more detailed 'ftp' instructions, to
Fred Espenak
via e-mail (espenak@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov). For Internet related
problems, please contact Joe Gurman
(gurman@uvsp.nascom.nasa.gov).
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