Eclipse Search

Want to do some eclipse research of your own? Well, now it's easy! Fred Espenak of NASA has published a Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses, listing all solar eclipses from 2000 BC to 3000 AD. I have converted this catalog into database form, and added a search engine so that you can search for particular combinations of circumstances. You can search the database simply by filling in the form below.

There are full statistics on the eclipses in the database on the statistics page. Don't forget to also check out my listings of future lunar and solar eclipses, for detailed descriptions and maps of eclipses up to 2020.

Note that all dates in the database up to Oct 04, 1582 are in the Julian calendar; all dates after Oct 15 1582 are Gregorian.

Query the Eclipse Database

The database contains all solar and lunar eclipses from 2000 BC to 3000 AD inclusive. BC years are shown in negative notation, as used by astronomers; 1 BC is year 0, 2 BC is year -1, etc.; so 2000 BC is -1999.

To do a search, pick a range of years to search, or leave those fields blank to search the whole database. Then pick a search type:

you can search for all eclipses in the chosen range of years;

or for eclipses in a particular Saros series and/or of a given type;

or for years where a certain number of eclipses occur, or a certain number of total eclipses (for example, to find a year with 4 eclipses).

Bear in mind that if a Saros started before 2000 BC, or ends after 3000 AD, only part of the series will be shown.

Any field left blank will match all possible values for that field. Leaving all the fields blank, and selecting all the eclipse types, will return the whole database; since this is huge, the results are broken up into pages. Go to the eclipse stats page to see how you can get the whole database, and the search engine.

Key to Fields

Date / Time

The date and time of the moment of greatest eclipse. This is the instant when the axis of the Moon's shadow passes closest to the Earth's center. The date format is year/month/day, and the year is always shown in full; so, a date like "97/03/17" means the 17th of March, year 97 AD (not 1997); and bearing in mind the astronomical notation for BC years, "-19/03/17" means the 17th of March, year 20 BC.

All dates in the database up to Oct 04, 1582 are in the Julian calendar; all dates after Oct 15 1582 are Gregorian.

For total eclipses, the instant of greatest eclipse is virtually identical to the instants of greatest magnitude and greatest duration.

Type

The type of the eclipse. The first letter is one of:

S

A solar eclipse. The following letter is the type: P=partial; T=total; A=annular; H=hybrid.

L

A lunar eclipse. The following letter is the type: N=penumbral; P=partial; T=total.

The following notations may also appear:

N

The northern edge of the eclipse is off the north end of the Earth.

N-

The northern edge and the centre of the eclipse are off the north end of the Earth.

S

The southern edge of the eclipse is off the south end of the Earth.

S-

The southern edge and the centre of the eclipse are off the south end of the Earth.

Note that in a partial eclipse, the centre of the eclipse always misses the Earth.

Saros

The Saros series of the eclipse.

The following notations may also appear:

B

This is the first eclipse in this series.

M

This is the middle eclipse in this series.

E

This is the last eclipse in this series.

P-Mag

The penumbral magnitude of a lunar eclipse (doesn't apply to solar eclipses); the fraction of the Moon's diameter which is obscured by the penumbra.

U-Mag

The umbral magnitude of the eclipse. For a lunar eclipse, this is the fraction of the Moon's diameter obscured by the umbra; for a solar eclipse, it is the fraction of the Sun's diameter which is obscured at the moment of greatest eclipse.

Gamma

The distance of the the axis of the Moon's shadow from the Earth's center at maximum eclipse, measured as a fraction of the Earth's radius. A negative value indicates that the eclipse is below the centre of the Earth as seen from the Sun; this is not necessarily the same as being centred south of the equator, due to the Earth's tilt. The search form looks at absolute value of gamma -- ie. it treats all values as positive -- so that you can search for eg. all marginal eclipses without having to do two searches. Hence searching for values < 0 will return nothing.

P-Durn

For a lunar eclipse, this is the duration of the partial eclipse (if any) at the point of greatest eclipse (doesn't apply to solar eclipses).

T-Durn

For a lunar eclipse, this is the duration of the total (umbral) eclipse (if any); for a solar eclipse, it is the duration of the total or annular eclipse (if any) at the point of greatest eclipse.

Lat/Long

The location on the Earth's surface at which the greatest eclipse will be seen. This applies to solar eclipses only.

If you'd like to do your own experimentation with this data, you can download the raw database if you wish (1.4 Mb); remember that this data was created by Fred Espenak, and as Mr. Espenak says, ``Permission is freely granted to reproduce this data when accompanied by an acknowledgment''. You are also welcome to my Perl script that implements the search engine (15k). You can also get the source for this page, to see how it is invoked; it uses the Apache server-side include mechanism.

Any bugs in the results of this search engine are almost certainly mine, for which I apologise in advance; though I have tried to make this facility accurate and useful, I can't guarantee that it is.