Solar Eclipse Prime Page
Partial Solar Eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 (0997 Dec 16 BCE)
Fred Espenak
Introduction
The Partial Solar Eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 (0997 Dec 16 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 -0996 Dec 16 at 15:05:07 TD (08:05:07 UT1). This is 0.3 days after the Moon reaches perigee. 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 -36091.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 16 and is number 82 of 85 eclipses in the series. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moons descending node. The Moon moves northward with respect to the node with each succeeding eclipse in the series and gamma increases.
This is a very deep partial eclipse. It has an eclipse magnitude of 0.0737, while Gamma has a value of 1.4966.
The partial solar eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 is followed two weeks later by a total lunar eclipse on -0996 Dec 31.
Another solar eclipse occurs one synodic month after the -0996 Dec 16 eclipse. It is the partial solar eclipse of -0995 Jan 15.
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 25200.3 seconds for this eclipse. The uncertainty in ΔT is 620.1 seconds corresponding to a standard error in longitude of the eclipse path of ± 2.59°.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Orthographic Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 - global map of eclipse visibility
- Google Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 - interactive map of the eclipse path
- Circumstances Table: Partial Solar Eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 - eclipse times for hundreds of cities
- Saros 16 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Partial Solar Eclipse of -0996 Dec 16 .