Penumbral lunar eclipse of May 5, 2023
The penumbral lunar eclipse of May 5, 2023, will be visible from Africa, Asia, and Australia. This is the first of 2 lunar eclipses in 2023. It’s taking place 2 weeks after the hybrid solar eclipse of April 20, 2023.
The instant of the greatest eclipse will take place at 17:22 UTC on May 5, 5.5 days before the Moon reaches perigee. During the eclipse, the Moon is in the constellation Libra.1
The synodic month in which the eclipse takes place has a Brown Lunation Number of 1241. The eclipse belongs to Saros 141 and is number 24 of 72 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 penumbral eclipse with a penumbral eclipse magnitude of 0.9655 and a penumbral eclipse duration of 258.3 minutes. Gamma has a value of -1.0350.
This is the deepest penumbral eclipse since February 2017 and until September 2042.
References:
1 Penumbral Lunar Eclipse of 2023 May 05 – Fred Espenak
Featured image credit: Michael Seeley
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