Total Lunar Eclipse of 1971 Aug 06
Fred Espenak
Key to Lunar Eclipse Figure (below)
Introduction
The Total Lunar Eclipse of 1971 Aug 06 is visible from the following geographic regions:
- eastern South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia
The diagram to the right depicts the Moon's path with respect to Earth's umbral and penumbral shadows. Below it is a map showing the geographic regions of eclipse visibility. Click on the figure to enlarge it. For an explanation of the features appearing in the figure, see Key to Lunar Eclipse Figures.
The instant of greatest eclipse takes place on 1971 Aug 06 at 19:43:52 TD (19:43:10 UT1). This is 2.2 days before the Moon reaches perigee. During the eclipse, the Moon is in the constellation Capricornus. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 601.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 128 and is number 38 of 71 eclipses in the series. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moons ascending node. The Moon moves southward with respect to the node with each succeeding eclipse in the series and gamma decreases.
This total eclipse is central meaning the Moons disk actually passes through the axis of Earths umbral shadow. It has an umbral eclipse magnitude of 1.7283, and Gamma has a value of -0.0794. Because they are so deep, such eclipses typically have the longest total phases. In this case, the duration of totality lasts 99.4 minutes.
The total lunar eclipse of 1971 Aug 06 is preceded two weeks earlier by a partial solar eclipse on 1971 Jul 22, and it is followed two weeks later by a partial solar eclipse on 1971 Aug 20.
These eclipses all take place during a single eclipse season.
The eclipse predictions are given in both Terrestrial Dynamical Time (TD) and Universal Time (UT1). The parameter ΔT is used to convert between these two times (i.e., TD = UT1 + ΔT). ΔT has a value of 41.8 seconds for this eclipse.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Detailed Lunar Eclipse Figure - eclipse geometry diagram and map of eclipse visibility (Key to Figure)
- Saros 128 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Total Lunar Eclipse of 1971 Aug 06 .