The next
SOLAR ECLIPSE
visible from The Isle of Man

occurs on 4th January 2011, details of which can be found here.
This will only be seen as a partial eclipse from the Island. The Moon begins to eclipse the Sun at 07.03:01h UTC but the Sun will be 12.5° below the local horizon. When the Sun rises at 08.33h, the Moon will cover over half the Sun's disc. The Moon will gradually move off the Sun's face by 09.29:39h UTC. The Sun will only be 4.5° above the horizon at this time.

View an animation of a solar eclipse here.

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TOTAL Solar Eclipse is not in itself a particularly unusual event. There were for example 62 such occurrences during the 20th century. However only three of these (29th June, 1927; 30th June, 1954; 11th August, 1999) had a path of totality that crossed the British Isles, none of which included the Isle of Man. Indeed, no path of totality crossed any area of the British Isles for a period of 203 years, between 1724 and 1927. Given that there were "only three" during the 20th century, there have been only twelve since 500 AD, so from that perspective, it was a flush century.

To say the Isle of Man is not exactly blessed with total solar eclipses would be an understatement of major proportions, for the last path of totality that crossed over our fair Isle was on 8th April, 1652. And just in case you were thinking that there must be one bound to appear soon, well, that won't be until 14th June, 2151! There was a tantalisingly near miss for the Island on 29th June, 1927, as can be seen from this illustration showing the path of totality, but this required a trip out into the Irish Sea to witness. In fact such a trip took place, courtesy of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company on their vessel "Mona". Unsurprisingly, this was dogged by cloud cover. Who would have thought it! One Isle of Man resident, Percy Johnson, was more fortunate however and saw the whole event clearly from a location near Southport. He reported his observations with much enthusiasm on page seven of the Isle of Man Times on the following Saturday, 2nd July, 1927. Unfortunately a scan of the-printout-of-the-microfilm held at the Manx Museum in Douglas, proved rather poor, so in its place you will find a close facsimile to the original text re-typed in the same two-column format, typos and all, in Adobe Reader format here (83 KB).

Partial solar eclipses are common from our Island but unless you know that the actual event is happening, then you would never notice. Annular solar eclipses are even rarer than total eclipses as viewed from the Isle of Man. The last annular eclipse occurred on 24th December, 1601 and the next will not be visible until 2nd October, 2350.

It's fair to say, that if you want to experience a total eclipse, then you will have to journey to one. You may recall that for the vast majority of people attempting to glimpse the 1999 eclipse that crossed Cornwall, the ubiquitous maritime covering of cumulus nimbus masked it for all but a lucky few. So sunnier climes are a much better bet, which means travel and expense. And that is just what some members of the IoMAS have done in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.

Just in case you are a die-hard stay-at-home-in-the-Isle-of-Man type, and you can afford to invest in a cryogenic future, immediately below you'll find a map with your ideal defrosting dates from the year 2100. Bear in mind the disclaimer on our Welcome page though, for we accept no liabilities for any inaccuracies! The year 2200 looks to be a favourite (right bang on top of our Foxdale Observatory), unless you live at the Point of Ayre Lighthouse that is. Don't forget to check with the MET Office at Ronaldsway for the forecast first!

And now to more recent times. A number of our members made trips to destinations in Africa and Turkey to witness the total solar eclipse of 29th March, 2006. Our Chairman Howard Parkin, Treasurer Gary Corlett, and Membership Secretary Dave Storey took the Turkish option, the incriminating evidence of which lies below!

Hmm, someone's been "Photoshopping" here methinks!
Notice the original photograph keeps creeping through?

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