Total solar eclipse of December 4, 2021

A total solar eclipse will take place on December 4, 2021, just two weeks after a partial lunar eclipse on November 19 – the longest since 1440 and until 2669​.¹

The total eclipse will be visible from Antarctica and partially visible from South Africa and south Atlantic.

The instant of greatest eclipse will take place at 07:33 UTC, 0.1 days before the Moon reaches perigee. During the eclipse, the Sun is in the constellation Ophiuchus. The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 1224.²

The animation above shows the path of the Moon's shadow across the Earth. The red circle shows the edge of the Moon's shadow: all places inside the red circle will see the Moon covering some part of the Sun's disk. Within this, contours show where various fractions of the Sun's disk are covered. The green cross in the center of the Moon's shadow indicates the point of the central eclipse, where the Moon appears exactly centered on the middle of the Sun's disk, and where a total eclipse will be seen. Animation courtesy: Dominic Ford

The eclipse belongs to Saros 152 and is number 13 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.

References:

1 Partial lunar eclipse of November 19, 2021 – the longest since 1440 and until 2669 – The Watchers

² Total solar eclipse of December 4, 2021 – Mr. Eclipse

Featured image credit: NASA, Goddard