Solar Eclipse Prime Page
Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 (1657 Dec 23 BCE)
Fred Espenak
Introduction
The Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 (1657 Dec 23 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 -1656 Dec 23 at 22:14:21 TD (11:34:05 UT1). This is 4.6 days after the Moon reaches apogee. During the eclipse, the Sun is in the constellation Capricornus. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of -44254.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 15 and is number 51 of 75 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.
The solar eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 is a relatively long annular eclipse with a duration at greatest eclipse of 07m06s. It has an eclipse magnitude of 0.9417.
The annular solar eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 is preceded two weeks earlier by a penumbral lunar eclipse on -1656 Dec 08, and it is followed two weeks later by a penumbral lunar eclipse on -1655 Jan 07.
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 38415.9 seconds for this eclipse. The uncertainty in ΔT is 2410.4 seconds corresponding to a standard error in longitude of the eclipse path of ± 10.07°.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Orthographic Map: Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 - global map of eclipse visibility
- Google Map: Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 - interactive map of the eclipse path
- Path Table: Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 - coordinates of the central line and path limits
- Circumstances Table: Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 - eclipse times for hundreds of cities
- Saros 15 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
The tables below contain detailed predictions and additional information on the Annular Solar Eclipse of -1656 Dec 23 .