Local Circumstances of a Solar Eclipse

Computation of possibility of observing solar eclipse at the observer's location

Although the track of the central line for a solar eclipse is often known and published years in advance, yearbooks generally contain no details of the local circumstances of an eclipse for a specific observing site. The EclTimer.m (as an extension to the Eclipse.m) enables the local circumstances of an eclipse to be calculated for any given point. The geometrical requirement for observing first or fourth contact at solar eclipses is that the observer shall be located somewhere on the curved boundary of the Moon’s penumbra. Second and third contact, in contrast, occur when the observer is at the boundary of the umbral shadow.

The test_EclTimer.m receives date of new Moon (year, month, day, hour), geographical longitude and latitude of the observer in [rad], then returns possibility of observing solar eclipse at the observer's location.

Time of new Moon and solar eclipse can be computed using "test_MoonPhases.m" and "test_Eclipse.m" from the following links:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/55270-moon-phases

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/55279-solar-eclipse

References:

Montenbruck O., Pfleger T.; Astronomy on the Personal Computer; Springer Verlag, Heidelberg; 4th edition (2000).

Meeus J.; Astronomical Algorithms; Willmann-Bell; Richmond, Virginia; 2nd edition (1998).

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEcat5/deltatpoly.html