Solar Eclipse Prime Page
Partial Solar Eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 (0541 Dec 15 BCE)
Fred Espenak
Introduction
The Partial Solar Eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 (0541 Dec 15 BCE) is visible from the geographic regions shown on the map to the right. Click on the map to enlarge it. For an explanation of the features appearing in the map, see Key to Solar Eclipse Maps.
The instant of greatest eclipse takes place on -0540 Dec 15 at 02:31:50 TD (21:37:00 UT1). This is 0.6 days before the Moon reaches apogee. During the eclipse, the Sun is in the constellation Sagittarius. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of -30451.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 33 and is number 81 of 84 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 is a very deep partial eclipse. It has an eclipse magnitude of 0.0657, while Gamma has a value of -1.5330.
The partial solar eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 is followed two weeks later by a total lunar eclipse on -0540 Dec 29.
Another solar eclipse occurs one synodic month after the -0540 Dec 15 eclipse. It is the partial solar eclipse of -0539 Jan 13.
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., UT1 = TD - ΔT). ΔT has a value of 17689.7 seconds for this eclipse. The uncertainty in ΔT is 445.2 seconds corresponding to a standard error in longitude of the eclipse path of ± 1.86°.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Orthographic Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 - global map of eclipse visibility
- Google Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 - interactive map of the eclipse path
- Circumstances Table: Partial Solar Eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 - eclipse times for hundreds of cities
- Saros 33 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Partial Solar Eclipse of -0540 Dec 15 .