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Astronomers' predictions of eclipses began in China as early as the 4th century BC; eclipses hundreds of years into the future may now be predicted with high accuracy. Looking directly at the Sun can lead to permanent eye damage, so special eye protection or indirect viewing techniques are used when viewing a solar eclipse.
As with solar eclipses, the Gregorian year of a lunar eclipse can be calculated as: year = 28.945 × number of the saros series + 18.030 × number of the inex series − 2454.564. Lunar eclipses can also be plotted in a similar diagram, this diagram covering 1000 AD to 2500 AD. The yellow diagonal band represents all the eclipses from 1900 to 2100.
18.999 eclipse years (38 eclipse seasons of 173.31 days) 238.992 anomalistic months; 241.029 sidereal months; The 19 eclipse years means that if there is a solar eclipse (or lunar eclipse), then after one saros a new moon will take place at the same node of the orbit of the Moon, and under these circumstances another solar eclipse can occur.
The 40-year-old Einstein was right. ... a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good ...
An eclipse could mean trouble, for the wise men who failed to predict it. There is a story — apocryphal — about two Chinese astronomers named Hsi and Ho, of the Xia dynasty, who got drunk and ...
Obliquity of the ecliptic is the term used by astronomers for the inclination of Earth's equator with respect to the ecliptic, or of Earth's rotation axis to a perpendicular to the ecliptic. It is about 23.4° and is currently decreasing 0.013 degrees (47 arcseconds) per hundred years because of planetary perturbations. [13]
More than 2,500 years ago, Chinese astronomers compiled records of solar eclipses, but they saw them as dark omens for the emperor, who had to avoid meat and perform rites to “rescue” the sun.
They used methodological observations of the patterns of planets and stars movements to predict future possibilities such as eclipses. [8] Babylonians were able to make use of periodic appearances of the Moon to generate a time source - a calendar. This was developed as the appearance of the full moon was visible every month. [9]