A partial solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Wednesday, January 21, 1852, with a magnitude of 0.4577. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A partial solar eclipse occurs in the polar regions of the Earth when the center of the Moon's shadow misses the Earth.
It was first of three partial eclipses that took place that year within the space of nearly six months, the last one was in June 1852 in the same hemisphere with a very tiny portion in the same area with the previous eclipse but the remainder in South America.[1]
The eclipse was visible in almost the whole of Antarctica which had a 24-hour daylight with the exception of one part of the mid northernmost area of Antarctica by the Indian Ocean and around the area of the Antarctic Circle, a small piece of southernmost Tasmania with Hobart in it, most all of New Zealand's South Island and a small part of Wellington on North Island, the nearby Antipodes, Chatham Islands and Macquarrie Island. It also included the southernmost areas of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The eclipse started at sunrise around the area of the South Orkney Islands and finished at sunset in New Zealand.
The eclipse showed up to 45% obscuration in the area of the greatest eclipse which occurred at sunset.
in Tasmania and southeastern Australia and finished at sunset at the Pacific and a tiny part of Western Antarctica. The greatest eclipse was in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles (or kilometers) north of Antarctica at 68.9 S & 124.3 E at 7:12 UTC (11:12 AM local time on January 20).[1]
The subsolar marking was in the Indian Ocean around the Tropic of Capricorn and offshore from the Agalega Islands.
Shown below are two tables displaying details about this particular solar eclipse. The first table outlines times at which the moon's penumbra or umbra attains the specific parameter, and the second table describes various other parameters pertaining to this eclipse.[2]
| First Penumbral External Contact | 1852 January 21 at 05:32:16.3 UTC | |
| Equatorial Conjunction | 1852 January 21 at 06:54:39.4 UTC | |
| Greatest Eclipse | 1852 January 21 at 07:12:15.7 UTC | |
| Ecliptic Conjunction | 1852 January 21 at 07:26:51.7 UTC | |
| Last Penumbral External Contact | 1852 January 21 at 08:52:28.0 UTC |
| Eclipse Magnitude | 0.45774 | |
| Eclipse Obscuration | 0.33832 | |
| Gamma | −1.29485 | |
| Sun Right Ascension | 20h10m41.9s | |
| Sun Declination | -20°03'55.8" | |
| Sun Semi-Diameter | 16'15.0" | |
| Sun Equatorial Horizontal Parallax | 08.9" | |
| Moon Right Ascension | 20h11m18.5s | |
| Moon Declination | -21°15'36.8" | |
| Moon Semi-Diameter | 15'13.9" | |
| Moon Equatorial Horizontal Parallax | 0°55'54.1" | |
| ΔT | 7.1 s |
See also: Eclipse cycle. This eclipse is part of an eclipse season, a period, roughly every six months, when eclipses occur. Only two (or occasionally three) eclipse seasons occur each year, and each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months (173 days) later; thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. In the sequence below, each eclipse is separated by a fortnight.
The partial solar eclipses on April 3, 1848 and September 27, 1848 occur in the previous lunar year eclipse set, and the solar eclipses on June 17, 1852 (partial) and December 11, 1852 (total) occur in the next lunar year eclipse set.
| Solar eclipse series sets from 1848 to 1852 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Descending node | Ascending node | |||||
| Saros | Map | Gamma | Saros | Map | Gamma | |
| 108 | March 5, 1848 Partial | 1.3950 | 113 | August 28, 1848 Partial | −1.5475 | |
| 118 | February 23, 1849 Annular | 0.7475 | 123 | August 18, 1849 Total | −0.7343 | |
| 128 | February 12, 1850 Annular | 0.0503 | 133 | August 7, 1850 Total | 0.0215 | |
| 138 | February 1, 1851 Annular | −0.6413 | 143 | July 28, 1851 Total | 0.7644 | |
| 148 | January 21, 1852 Partial | −1.2948 | ||||
All eclipses in this table occur at the Moon's descending node.
