A total

solar eclipse A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs approximately every six months, during the eclipse season i ...

occurred at the Moon's

descending node An orbital node is either of the two points where an orbit intersects a plane of reference to which it is inclined. A non-inclined orbit, which is contained in the reference plane, has no nodes. Planes of reference Common planes of referenc ...

of orbit between Friday, January 3 and Saturday, January 4, 1908, with a

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

of 1.0437. A

occurs when the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

passes between

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

and the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's

apparent diameter The angular diameter, angular size, apparent diameter, or apparent size is an angular separation (in units of angle) describing how large a sphere or circle appears from a given point of view. In the vision sciences, it is called the '' visual ...

is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide. Occurring about 14 hours before

perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...

(on January 4, 1908, at 12:30 UTC), the Moon's apparent diameter was larger. Totality was visible from

Ebon Atoll Ebon Atoll (Marshallese language, Marshallese: , ) is a coral atoll of 22 islands in the Pacific Ocean, forming a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its land area is , and it encloses a deep lagoon with an area of . ...

German New Guinea German New Guinea () consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups, and was part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called , became a German protectorate in 188 ...

(now in

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is an island country west of the International Date Line and north of the equator in the Micronesia region of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. The territory consists of 29 c ...

British Western Pacific Territories The British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) was a colonial entity created in 1877 for the administration of a series of Pacific islands in Oceania under a single representative of the British Crown, styled the High Commissioner for the Weste ...

(the part now belonging to

Kiribati Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. The st ...

Line Islands The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands () are a chain of 11 atolls (with partly or fully enclosed lagoons, except Vostok and Jarvis) and coral islands (with a surrounding reef) in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawa ...

(now in Kiribati),

Phoenix Islands The Phoenix Islands, or Rawaki, are a group of eight atolls and two submerged coral reefs that lie east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. They are part of the Kiribati, Republic ...

(now in Kiribati) on January 4 (Saturday), and

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

on January 3 (Friday). A partial eclipse was visible for parts of northern

Oceania Oceania ( , ) is a region, geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Mainland Australia is regarded as its co ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, southern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...

, the western

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

, and western

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

Observations

The eclipse was observed by astronomer

William Wallace Campbell William Wallace Campbell (April 11, 1862 – June 14, 1938) was an American astronomer, and director of Lick Observatory from 1901 to 1930. He specialized in spectroscopy. He was the tenth president of the University of California from 1923 to 1 ...

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...

, viewed from

Flint Island Flint Island is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific Ocean, part of the Southern Line Islands under the jurisdiction of Kiribati. In 2014 the I-Kiribati government established a exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Isla ...

, an uninhabited island in the Line Islands. The team of Lick Observatory departed from

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

on November 22, 1907, and arrived in

Papeete Papeete (Tahitian language, Tahitian: ''Papeʻetē'', pronounced ; old name: ''Vaiʻetē''Personal communication with Michael Koch in ) is the capital city of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of the France, French Republic in the Pacific ...

Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian language, Tahitian , ; ) is the largest island of the Windward Islands (Society Islands), Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France. It is located in the central part of t ...

Island, the capital of French Polynesia on December 4. After making preparations of supplies and logistics personnel, it departed again on the evening of December 7 and arrived at Flint Island on the afternoon of 9 December. : 1908_01_03_Lick

Astronomers from the

Royal Astronomical Society The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charitable organisation, charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, planetary science, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its ...

Sydney Observatory The Sydney Observatory is a heritage-listed meteorological station, astronomical observatory, function venue, science museum, and education facility located on Observatory Hill at Upper Fort Street, in the inner city Sydney suburb of Millers P ...

and a party from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

which included

Francis McClean Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Kennedy McClean, (1 February 1876 – 11 August 1955) was a British civil engineer and pioneer aviator. Sir Francis was one of the founding members of the Royal Aero Club and one of the founders of naval aviati ...

and

Henry Winkelmann Henry Winkelmann (26 September 1860 – 5 July 1931) was a New Zealand photographer. Winkelmann's photographs covered a wide range of topics, but he is best known for his yachting photographs. Early years Henry Winkelmann was born at 8 Melbou ...

also observed the total eclipse near the observation site of Lick Observatory. The team successfully took images of the

corona Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus or disease responsible for the COVID-19 ...

Eclipse details

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.

Eclipse season

This eclipse is part of an

eclipse season An eclipse season is a period, roughly every six months, when eclipses occur. Eclipse seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of the Orbit of the Moon, Moon's orbital plane (orbital inclination, tilted five degrees to the ecliptic, Earth ...

, 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 A fortnight is a unit of time equal to 14 days (two weeks). The word derives from the Old English term , meaning "" (or "fourteen days", since the Anglo-Saxons counted by nights). Astronomy and tides In astronomy, a ''lunar fortnight'' is hal ...

Related eclipses

Eclipses in 1908

* A total solar eclipse on January 3. * A penumbral lunar eclipse on January 18. * A penumbral lunar eclipse on June 14. * An annular solar eclipse on June 28. * A penumbral lunar eclipse on July 13. * A penumbral lunar eclipse on December 7. * A hybrid solar eclipse on December 23.

Metonic

* Preceded by:

Solar eclipse of March 17, 1904 An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Thursday, March 17, 1904, with a magnitude of 0.9367. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image ...

* Followed by: Solar eclipse of October 22, 1911

Tzolkinex

* Preceded by:

Solar eclipse of November 22, 1900 An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's ascending node of orbit on Thursday, November 22, 1900, with a magnitude of 0.9421. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the imag ...

* Followed by: Solar eclipse of February 14, 1915

Half-Saros

* Preceded by: Lunar eclipse of December 27, 1898 * Followed by: Lunar eclipse of January 8, 1917

Tritos

* Preceded by:

Solar eclipse of February 1, 1897 Solar may refer to: Astronomy * Of or relating to the Sun ** Solar telescope, a special purpose telescope used to observe the Sun ** A device that utilizes solar energy (e.g. "solar panels") ** Solar calendar, a calendar whose dates indicate t ...

* Followed by: Solar eclipse of December 3, 1918

Solar Saros 130

* Preceded by: Solar eclipse of December 22, 1889 * Followed by: Solar eclipse of January 14, 1926

Inex

* Preceded by:

Solar eclipse of January 22, 1879 An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's Lunar node, ascending node of orbit on Wednesday January 22, 1879, with a Magnitude of eclipse, magnitude of 0.9700. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby tot ...

* Followed by:

Solar eclipse of December 13, 1936 An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's ascending node of orbit between Sunday, December 13 and Monday, December 14, 1936, with a magnitude of 0.9349. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally o ...

Triad

* Preceded by: Solar eclipse of March 4, 1821 * Followed by: Solar eclipse of November 3, 1994

Solar eclipses of 1906–1909

Saros 130

Metonic series

Tritos series

Inex series

Notes

References

Photo of Solar Corona January 3, 1908
{{DEFAULTSORT:Solar Eclipse Of January 3, 1908 1908 01 03 1908 in science 1908 01 03 January 1908