August 4, 1999

Last Solar Eclipse of this Century on August 11, 1999

Click on the image for a larger view and additional information.

Path of the total solar eclipse on August 11, 1999. The image also shows the region over which the eclipse will be partial. The percentages indicate the magnitude of the partial eclipse*. The lines labeled UTC refer to the time when the eclipse is visible**

Image adapted from one published by Fred Espenak, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

On August 11, 1999, the Earth will experience the last total solar eclipse of the twentieth century.

The eclipse will begin in the western North Atlantic, about 200 miles south of Nova Scotia, when the Moon's shadow will first touch down on Earth at sunrise (09:31 UTC). The shadow will then race across the Atlantic, make landfall in Europe 39 minutes later (10:10 UTC) at the Isles of Scilly off the southwestern coast of England, and continue its journey in roughly a southeasterly direction across central Europe, the Black Sea, eastern Turkey, the northeastern tip of Syria, northern Iraq, Iran, southern Pakistan, and India. Finally, the shadow will sweep out into the Bay of Bengal and rise off the Earth's surface at 12:36 UTC.

Major cities that will lie in the path of the total eclipse are Plymouth in England, Le Havre and Metz in France, Stuttgart and Munich in Germany, Salzburg and Graz in Austria, Bucharest in Romania, and Karachi in Pakistan. Several other major cities will lie just outside the Moon's shadow and experience partial eclipses of 90% or greater: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Vienna, Zagreb, Budapest, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul, Ankara, Baghdad, Tehran, and Bombay. The full extent of the partial eclipse extends to northeastern North America, all of Europe, northern Africa, and a large part of Asia (see image above).

The journey of the Moon's shadow across the Earth's surface will be nearly 9,000 miles long and last just a little over three hours. The instant of greatest eclipse will occur at 11:03 UTC when the Moon's shadow will pass through Romania. The shadow will then reach a maximum width of nearly 70 miles and totality will last 2 minutes 23 seconds. The shadow's speed at that moment will be 1,500 miles/hour.

The next total solar eclipse will not occur until June 21, 2001. It will be visible from the South Atlantic, southern Africa (Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique), and Madagascar.

* The percentage of a partial eclipse is defined as the fraction of the Sun's diameter occulted by the Moon. This percentage is also referred to as eclipse magnitude. For instance, a magnitude of 90% means that 90% of the Sun's diameter is blocked by the Moon.

** Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the international standard of time. It is also referred to as Universal Time (UT) or Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT). It is based on a 24-hour clock, with 0:00 UTC being midnight in Greenwich, England, which lies on the zero longitudinal meridian. For instance, 9:00 UTC (i.e., nine o'clock in the morning in Greenwich) corresponds to 5:00 a.m. EDT in the US and 11:00 summer time in Munich, Germany).

More Cool Stuff

We obtained the original of the above image from Fred Espenak's Eclipse homepage. Click on "Total Solar Eclipse of 1999 August 11" to access more detailed information than we have given, including maps, the eclipse's path, local weather prospects, how to view an eclipse safely, how to photograph and videotape an eclipse, and much other useful information:

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html

For a description of what causes a total solar eclipse and what you see during such an event, go to our description of the solar eclipse over Russia on March 9, 1997:

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/nasa/ootw/1997/ootw_970305/ob970305.html

To learn more about the Sun and stars, go to our articles "Our Sun" and "Stars: An Introduction":

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/nasa/exhibits/sun/sunframe.html

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/nasa/exhibits/stars/star_0.html

As part of its Learning Technologies Project (LTP), NASA supports a number of educational Web sites that have excellent material on the space sciences:

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/nasa/education/edu/edudocs/topic_space.html