Solar eclipse of July 10, 1972

Solar eclipse of July 10, 1972
Map
Type of eclipse
Nature	Total
Gamma	0.6872
Magnitude	1.0379
Maximum eclipse
Duration	156 sec (2 m 36 s)
Coordinates
Max. width of band	175 km (109 mi)
Times (UTC)
Greatest eclipse	19:46:38
References
Saros	126 (45 of 72)
Catalog # (SE5000)	9448

A total solar eclipse occurred on July 10, 1972. It was visible as a total eclipse across northeastern Asia and northern Canada, and as a partial eclipse across the United States.

Related eclipses

Solar eclipses of 1971-1974

Each member in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.

Note: Partial solar eclipses on February 25, 1971 and August 20, 1971 occur in the next lunar year set.

Solar eclipse series sets from 1971-1974

Descending node			Ascending node
Saros	Map		Saros	Map
116	July 22, 1971 Partial		121	January 16, 1972 Annular
126	July 10, 1972 Total		131	January 4, 1973 Annular
136	June 30, 1973 Total		141	December 24, 1973 Annular
146	June 20, 1974 Total		151	December 13, 1974 Partial

Saros 126

It is a part of Saros cycle 126, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, containing 71 events. The series started with partial solar eclipse on March 10, 1179. It contains annular eclipses from June 4, 1323 through April 4, 1810 and hybrid eclipses from April 14, 1828 through May 6, 1864. It contains total eclipses from May 17, 1882 through August 23, 2044. The series ends at member 72 as a partial eclipse on May 3, 2459. The longest duration of central eclipse (annular or total) was 5 minutes, 46 seconds of annularity on November 22, 1593. The longest duration of totality was 2 minutes, 36 seconds on July 10, 1972.

Series members 39-49 occur between 1901 and 2100:

39	40	41
June 8, 1918	June 19, 1936	June 30, 1954
42	43	44
July 10, 1972	July 22, 1990	August 1, 2008
45	46	47
August 12, 2026	150px August 23, 2044	September 3, 2062
48	49
September 13, 2080	September 25, 2098

Metonic series

The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days).

This series has 21 eclipse events between July 11, 1953 and July 11, 2029.

In popular culture

Carly Simon's December 1972 pop hit "You're So Vain" contains the lyric "Then you flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun." As she started writing lyrics that would become this song on a napkin as far back as 1971, the lyrics cannot possibly have been a reference to this eclipse, but only to the one whose path of totality also crossed Nova Scotia two years earlier, on March 7, 1970.

References

• Earth visibility chart and eclipse statistics Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC
  • Google interactive map
  • Besselian elements
• Foto solar eclipse of July 10, 1972 in Russia
• Foto solar eclipse of July 10, 1972 in Russia (2)
• Image solar eclipse of July 10, 1972