An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's ascending node of orbit between Wednesday, March 7 and Thursday, March 8, 1951,[1] with a magnitude of 0.9896. 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. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide. The Moon's apparent diameter was near the average diameter because it occurred 5.5 days after perigee (on March 2, 1951, at 7:10 UTC) and 7.4 days before apogee (on March 15, 1951, at 6:20 UTC).[2]
Annularity was visible from New Zealand on March 8 (Thursday), and northern Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and San Andrés Island in Colombia on March 7 (Wednesday). A partial eclipse was visible for parts of Oceania, western South America, southern North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
This was the first solar eclipse in the world broadcast live on television. American stations such as WCBS-TV, WNET, and NBC News broadcast it live. The path of annularity did not pass the United States of America, and only a partial solar eclipse was visible from the southeastern half of the country. For example, in New York City, a partial solar eclipse occurred right before the sunset, whose gratitude (ratio of diameter covered by the moon) was only 17%, meaning only 8% of the total disk area was covered at the peak of the eclipse. The curator of the Hayden Planetarium in New York also asked "don’t get people too excited about it" in an interview with The New York Times, but many TV stations still incorporated the solar eclipse into their regular afternoon schedule and also some new TV technology was inaugurated.[3]
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.[4]
| First Penumbral External Contact | 1951 March 07 at 18:04:26.8 UTC | |
| First Umbral External Contact | 1951 March 07 at 19:05:55.2 UTC | |
| First Central Line | 1951 March 07 at 19:06:44.2 UTC | |
| First Umbral Internal Contact | 1951 March 07 at 19:07:33.2 UTC | |
| First Penumbral Internal Contact | 1951 March 07 at 20:12:35.1 UTC | |
| Equatorial Conjunction | 1951 March 07 at 20:39:08.0 UTC | |
| Ecliptic Conjunction | 1951 March 07 at 20:51:00.5 UTC | |
| Greatest Eclipse | 1951 March 07 at 20:53:39.9 UTC | |
| Last Penumbral Internal Contact | 1951 March 07 at 21:35:03.7 UTC | |
| Last Umbral Internal Contact | 1951 March 07 at 22:39:53.5 UTC | |
| Last Central Line | 1951 March 07 at 22:40:45.3 UTC | |
| Greatest Duration | 1951 March 07 at 22:40:45.3 UTC | |
| Last Umbral External Contact | 1951 March 07 at 22:41:37.2 UTC | |
| Last Penumbral External Contact | 1951 March 07 at 23:43:05.1 UTC |
| Eclipse Magnitude | 0.98959 | |
| Eclipse Obscuration | 0.97930 | |
| Gamma | −0.24196 | |
| Sun Right Ascension | 23h10m14.1s | |
| Sun Declination | -05°20'18.6" | |
| Sun Semi-Diameter | 16'06.8" | |
| Sun Equatorial Horizontal Parallax | 08.9" | |
| Moon Right Ascension | 23h10m40.8s | |
| Moon Declination | -05°32'31.4" | |
| Moon Semi-Diameter | 15'42.0" | |
| Moon Equatorial Horizontal Parallax | 0°57'37.1" | |
| ΔT | 29.6 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 first and last eclipse in this sequence is separated by one synodic month.