Annular Solar eclipse of May 20, 2012

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An annular solar eclipse will take place on May 20, 2012 (May 21, 2012 for local time in Eastern Hemisphere), with a magnitude of 0.9439. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially 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, causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometres wide.

Solar eclipse of May 20, 2012

Visibility
The annular phase will be visible from the Chinese coast, northern Taiwan, the south of Japan, and the western part of the United States. Guangzhou, Taipei, Tokyo and Albuquerque will be on the central path. Its maximum will occur in the North Pacific, south of the Aleutian islands for 5 min and 46.3 s, and finish in the western United States.


Animation of eclipse path North America

It will be the first central eclipse of the 21st century in the continental USA, and also the first annular eclipse there since the solar eclipse of May 10, 1994 which was also the previous eclipse of this series Solar Saros 128.


Animation of eclipse as viewed from Albuquerque, New Mexico, showing sunset before the eclipse ends
Related eclipses Solar eclipses 2011-2014

This set of solar eclipses repeat approximately every 177 days and 4 hours at alternating nodes of the moon's orbit.

Note: Partial solar eclipses on January 4, 2011 and July 1, 2011 occur in the previous lunar year eclipse set.


Solar eclipse series sets from 2011–2014

Descending node			Ascending node
118	June 1, 2011 Partial		123	November 25, 2011 Partial
128	May 20, 2012 Annular		133	November 13, 2012 Total
138	May 10, 2013 Annular		143	November 3, 2013 Hybrid
148	April 29, 2014 Annular		153	October 23, 2014 Partial

Saros 128
It is a part of Saros cycle 128, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, containing 73 events. The series started with partial solar eclipse on August 29, 984 AD. It contains total eclipses from May 16, 1417 through June 18, 1471 and hybrid eclipses from June 28, 1489 through July 31, 1543. Then it progresses into annular eclipses from August 11, 1561 through July 25, 2120. The series ends at member 73 as a partial eclipse on November 1, 2282. The longest duration of totality was 1 minutes, 45 seconds on June 7, 1453.

Series members 52-62 occur between 1901 and 2100:

52	53	54
March 17, 1904	March 28, 1922	April 7, 1940
55	56	57
April 19, 1958	April 29, 1976	May 10, 1994
58	59	60
May 20, 2012	June 1, 2030	June 11, 2048
61	62
June 22, 2066	July 3, 2084

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