Annular eclipse On October 14, 2023

On Saturday, October 14, an annular solar eclipse crossed North, Central, and South America. It was visible in parts of the United States, Mexico, and Central America, passing over Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. The eclipse path then crossed into South America in Colombia and passed over Northern Brazil before ending at sunset in the Atlantic Ocean.

This eclipse was not a total, but an annular one. During an annular solar eclipse, the apparent size of the Moon’s disk is slightly smaller than the apparent size of the Sun’s disk. Therefore, the outer edge of the Sun remains visible and the Sun appears as a beautiful "ring of fire" if you are inside the path of the annular eclipse. Observers outside the shadow path see a partial solar eclipse. 

Due to its fast polar orbit, the PROBA2 satellite did not cross the eclipse path, but instead observed several partial eclipses. In fact, the Moon passed into SWAP's field-of-view 4 times, but crossed the solar disk only twice. We then speak of occultations.

Click below to see a movie of the simulation of the eclipse that was used to plan the PROBA2 observations of this event. During the last occultation (4th passage) up to nearly 56% of the solar disk was covered by the Moon.

LYRA observations

As for all eclipses, LYRA activated one of its backup units, which acquires in parallel with the nominal unit. The instrument monitors the progressive extinction of the solar light in its channels that observe in the ultraviolet (red and green curves) and extreme ultraviolet (black and blue curves). LYRA observations are available in the event directory.

 

SWAP observations

We made high cadence observations of the occultations with SWAP and produced our typical sets of calibrated PNG images (with logos and timestamp, with timestamp only, and without logos or timestamp), as well as movies of the event. All movies and images of the eclipse are collected in dedicated directories on our webpages. The event directory also contains a specially selected SWAP image to promote the eclipse, shown below. This is the image with the largest part of the Sun occulted by the Moon. Click on the image to see a movie of the eclipses observed by SWAP.