Penumbral Lunar Eclipse of 1999 Jan 31
Fred Espenak
Key to Lunar Eclipse Figure (below)
Introduction
The Penumbral Lunar Eclipse of 1999 Jan 31 is visible from the following geographic regions:
- Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Pacific
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 1999 Jan 31 at 16:18:34 TD (16:17:31 UT1). This is 4.8 days after the Moon reaches perigee. During the eclipse, the Moon is in the constellation Cancer. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 941.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 114 and is number 58 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 very deep penumbral eclipse is a rare total penumbral eclipse in which the entire disk of the Moon is immersed in the penumbral shadow. It has a penumbral eclipse magnitude of 1.0027 and a penumbral eclipse duration of 261.8 minutes. Gamma has a value of -1.0190.
The penumbral lunar eclipse of 1999 Jan 31 is followed two weeks later by a annular solar eclipse on 1999 Feb 16.
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 63.5 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 114 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Penumbral Lunar Eclipse of 1999 Jan 31 .