A Fix by Total Solar Eclipse

Abstract

In anticipation of the TOTAL Solar Eclipse on 11 August 1999 (see the January/February issue of Navigation News), it seemed very appropriate to repeat this short article by one of the Institute's most respected Fellows. It was first published in Vol. VII, October 1954.

A TOTAL eclipse of the Sun provides an opportunity, rare though it may be, of obtaining an instantaneous fix from the Sun alone. Eclipses vary greatly in character, in position on the Earth, in the width of the path of totality, in the duration, and also in the direction of the path. However, the shadow of the Moon cast by the Sun is always a right circular cone which, in the case of a total eclipse, intersects the Earth's surface at some point before its vertex. Owing to the motion of the Moon in its orbit round the Earth, the shadow moves at a speed of about 2000 m.p.h. from west to east (it varies considerably according to the distance of the Moon from the Earth). The intersection of this cone with the Earth's surface is an ellipse, which moves over the surface at speeds which are very high when the cone is nearly tangential (i.e. when the Sun's altitude is low) and at speeds as low as about 1000 m.p.h., when the eclipse is central over the equator at noon and the Earth's rotation has its maximum effect. The speed of the shadow is generally low enough to give a position line of considerable accuracy from the observed time of either second or third contacts, that is the beginning or ending of the total phase. An error of 1 second corresponds, in the most favourable case, to about one-third of a mile. The position line is, of course, the portion of the elliptic shadow corresponding to the observed phase and time; these can be precomputed.