An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Tuesday, April 29, 2014,[1] with a magnitude of 0.9868. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.
The center of the Moon's shadow missed the Earth's South Pole, but the partial eclipse was visible from parts of Antarctica and Australia, and an annular eclipse was visible from a small part of Antarctica.
This eclipse's gamma value was closer to 1 than any other eclipse from 2000 B.C. to 3000 A.D. This means the center of the Moon's shadow passed almost exactly at the surface of the Earth, barely missing the Antarctic continent by a few kilometers.
This eclipse is a member of the 2011–2014 solar eclipse semester series. An eclipse in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.[2][Note 1]
Note: Total Solar Eclipse on March 20, 2015, and a Partial Solar Eclipse of September 13, 2015 occur during the next lunar year set.
Saros 148
Solar saros 148, repeating every about 18 years and 11 days, contains 75 events. The series started with a partial solar eclipse on September 21, 1653. It has annular eclipses on April 29, 2014, and May 9, 2032, and a hybrid eclipse on May 20, 2050. It has total eclipses from May 31, 2068, to August 3, 2771. The series ends at member 75 as a partial eclipse on December 12, 2987. The longest total eclipse will be on April 26, 2609, at 5 minutes and 23 seconds.[3]
This eclipse is a part of a tritos cycle, repeating at alternating nodes every 135 synodic months (≈ 3986.63 days, or 11 years minus 1 month). Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee), but groupings of 3 tritos cycles (≈ 33 years minus 3 months) come close (≈ 434.044 anomalistic months), so eclipses are similar in these groupings.
The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition, the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days). All eclipses in this table occur at the Moon's descending node.
21 eclipse events, progressing from north to south between July 11, 1953 and July 11, 2029