September 1997 lunar eclipse

Total Lunar Eclipse September 16, 1997
The Moon passes west to east (right to left) across the Earth's umbral shadow, shown in hourly intervals.
Series	137 (27 of 81)
Gamma	-0.3768
Magnitude	1.1909
Duration (hr:mn:sc)
Totality	1:11:30
Partial	3:16:27
Penumbral	5:08:14
Contacts
P1	16:12:32 UTC
U1	17:08:25 UTC
U2	18:15:54 UTC
Greatest	18:46:39 UTC
U3	19:17:24 UTC
U4	20:24:52 UTC
P4	21:20:46 UTC

A total lunar eclipse took place at the Moon's descending node of the orbit on Tuesday, September 16, 1997, the second of two lunar eclipses in 1997. A shallow total eclipse saw the Moon in relative darkness for 1 hour, 1 minute and 30.8 seconds. The Moon was 19.094% of its diameter into the Earth's umbral shadow, and should have been significantly darkened. The partial eclipse lasted for 3 hours, 16 minutes and 28.2 seconds in total. The penumbral eclipse lasted for 5 hours, 8 minutes and 20.1 seconds. The partial eclipse lasted for 3 hours, 16 minutes and 28.2 seconds. The total eclipse lasted for 1 hour, 1 minute and 30.8 seconds. Maximum eclipse was at 18:46:39.1 UTC. The moon's apparent diameter was extremely large (6.3% larger than average) because occurred only 3 hours and 21 minutes past perigee. The Moon was only 356,986 km (221,820 mi) of the Earth at greatest eclipse.

This eclipse was the fourth and last of an almost tetrad (that occurred when there were 4 consecutive lunar eclipses that had an umbral eclipse magnitude of 0.9 or greater). The others were 04 Apr 1996 (T), 27 Sep 1996 (T) and 24 Mar 1997 (P).

This eclipse was the 25th eclipse in Saros series 137 (lunar eclipse), descending node. The previous event was on Thursday, September 6, 1979. The next event was on Monday, September 28, 2015.

Visibility[edit]

It was visible from all of Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Related eclipses[edit]

Eclipses of 1997[edit]

Lunar year series[edit]

This is the third of four lunar year eclipses at the descending node of the Moon's orbit.

Lunar eclipse series sets from 1995–1998
Ascending node				Descending node
Saros Photo	Date Viewing	Type Chart	Gamma	Saros Photo	Date Viewing	Type Chart	Gamma
112	1995 Apr 15	Partial	−0.95939	117	1995 Oct 08	Penumbral	1.11794
122	1996 Apr 04	Total	−0.25339	127	1996 Sep 27	Total	0.34264
132	1997 Mar 24	Partial	0.48990	137	1997 Sep 16	Total	−0.37684
142	1998 Mar 13	Penumbral	1.19644	147	1998 Sep 06	Penumbral	−1.10579

Last set	1994 May 25			Last set	1994 Nov 18

Next set	1999 Jan 31			Next set	1998 Aug 08

Saros series[edit]

It is part of Saros series 137.

Half-Saros cycle[edit]

A lunar eclipse will be preceded and followed by solar eclipses by 9 years and 5.5 days (a half saros).^[1] This lunar eclipse is related to two annular solar eclipses of Solar Saros 144.