A partial solar eclipse will take place early January 6, 2019 (UTC) and be visible from northeast Asia and north Pacific. The eclipse starts 22:39 UTC, January 5 and ends 04:37 UTC, January 6.
The Moon will pass in front of the Sun, creating a partial eclipse of the Sun visible from Eastern Asia, parts of United States, Northern Mariana Islands, b'Midway Islands' and b'Wake Island'.
The alignment between the Sun and Moon will not be very exact, and so the Moon will only partially cover the Sun, and nowhere on Earth will see a total eclipse.
According to NASA's Fred Espenak, also known as Mr. Eclipse, the instant of greatest eclipse takes place at 01:41 UTC, January 6, 2019. This is 3.1 days before the Moon reaches apogee. During the eclipse, the Sun is in the constellation Sagittarius. The synodic month n which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 1188.
The eclipse belongs to Saros 122 and is number 58 of 70 eclipses in the series. All eclipses in this series occur at the Moon’s 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, with eclipse magnitude of 0.7146 and Gamma value of 1.1417.
This partial solar eclipse is followed two weeks later by a total lunar eclipse on January 21, 2019.
These eclipses all take place during a single eclipse season.
The following links provide maps and data for the eclipse.
- Orthographic Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of January 6, 2019 - detailed map of eclipse visibility
- Animated Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of January 6, 2019 - animated map of the Moon's shadows across Earth
- Google Map: Partial Solar Eclipse of January 6, 2019 - interactive map of the eclipse path
- Circumstances Table: Partial Solar Eclipse of January 6, 2019 - eclipse times for hundreds of cities
- Saros 122 Table - data for all eclipses in the Saros series
For a full list of celestial events for this month, visit Night Sky Guide for January 2019.
Featured image: Partial Solar Eclipse by Steve
