Southeastern Mexico is preparing for the astronomical event of the year. On Saturday morning, October 14, the Moon will come between the Sun and Earth, triggering an annular solar eclipse that will be visible in a 200-kilometer-wide band that runs through the American continent and the United States. Mexico and Central America, Colombia and Brazil.
Where will the solar eclipse be seen in Mexico?
The “Ring of Fire” will be visible across the Yucatán Peninsula in a strip crossing southern Quintana Roo, southern Yucatán and northern Campeche. Among the best places to see the ring shape, which will last a maximum of four and a half minutes, will be the cities of Campeche and Champotón (Campeche); the ports of Celestún and Sisal, the archaeological zone of Uxmal (Yucatán); in addition to Chetumal and Bacalar (Quintana Roo).
In the rest of the country, the phenomenon is perceived as a partial solar eclipse, blocking between 80% and 53% of sunlight, depending on the observer’s distance from the path. In Mexico City, for example, the moon will cover 70% of the sun’s disk, while in Monterrey, closer to the strip, the sun will be obscured by 83%. In Cabo San Lucas, one of the points furthest from the ring strip, the partial solar eclipse will reach 53% and in Guadalajara 62%.
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How does an annular solar eclipse occur?
In contrast to total solar eclipses, during an annular solar eclipse the moon is further away from our planet and therefore appears smaller than the sun’s disk. Since it is not possible to completely cover it and cause temporary darkness, at the peak of annular eclipses it is possible to observe for a few minutes a “ring of fire”, a product of the solar disk protruding around the Moon, which continues to be the case is plunged into darkness.
The movement of the moon around the Earth determines whether a solar eclipse is total or annular. On average, the distance between the two stars is 384,400 kilometers; However, our natural satellite moves closer or further away depending on where it is in its orbit. When the Moon reaches the furthest point in its orbit from Earth (apogee), it appears slightly smaller in the night sky, while at the closest point (perigee) it appears larger. The culprit for this phenomenon is the ellipse that it describes around our planet: According to NASA, the distance between the Moon and Earth during an average apogee is 405,000 kilometers, while at perigee both stars are about 363,000 kilometers away. This variation, which can be up to 50,000 kilometers, is the key to determining whether the Moon will completely obscure the Sun (total solar eclipse) or whether the circumference of the Sun’s disk will create a ring of light around the Moon (annular solar eclipse).
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Time and percentage of darkness in Mexico
| CONDITION | MAXIMUM POINT (Hour) | MAXIMUM DARKNESS (% of the sun’s disk covered) |
|---|---|---|
| Aguascalientes | 10.59 | 68% |
| Baja California | 10.28 | 71% |
| Baja California Sur | 10.43 | 56% |
| Campeche | 11.24 | 90% (maximum) |
| Chiapas | 11.26 | 79% |
| Chihuahuas | 10.43 | 77% |
| Mexico City | 11.09 | 70% |
| Coahuila | 10.52 | 82% |
| Colima | 11.01 | 58% |
| Durango | 10.52 | 72% |
| State of Mexico | 11.08 | 68% |
| Guanajuato | 11.02 | 68% |
| warrior | 11.12 | 64% |
| gentleman | 11.08 | 72% |
| Jalisco | 10.59 | 62% |
| Michoacan | 11.04 | 64% |
| Morelos | 11.10 | 69% |
| Nayarit | 10.55 | 62% |
| New lion | 10.56 | 83% |
| Oaxaca | 11.19 | 70% |
| Puebla | 11.11 | 71% |
| Querétaro | 11.05 | 69% |
| Quintana Roo | 11.30 | 90% (maximum) |
| San Luis Potosi | 11.01 | 72% |
| Sinaloa | 10.46 | 65% |
| Sonora | 10.36 | 69% |
| Tabasco | 11.24 | 83% |
| Tamaulipas | 11.01 | 82% |
| Tlaxcala | 11.11 | 72% |
| Veracruz | 11.15 | 77% |
| Yucatan | 11.25 | 90% (maximum) |
| Zacatecas | 10.57 | 69% |
“The Eaten Sun”: the meaning of eclipses for the Mayans
The annular solar eclipse on October 14 will be particularly visible in the Yucatan Peninsula, the region where the ancient Mayans, methodical observers of the night sky, built temples, developed calendars and built cities based on the movement of stars in the celestial vault. Before noon on Saturday, the moon’s path through the sky will coincide with that of the sun, a phenomenon that has been considered a bad omen since pre-Hispanic cosmogony. “Since the sun is the main source of life, light and heat, for the Mesoamerican peoples, any phenomenon that caused the star to appear different from its everyday appearance was a cause of deep fear,” explains Jesús Galindo Trejo, Doctor of astrophysics and researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics. UNAM Aesthetic Research.
Unlike the solstices or the extremes of Venus, which appeared regularly in the sky and whose observations were recorded in codices, eclipses seemed to challenge the prevailing logic in the celestial vault. “The brilliance and regularity of the Sun’s movement reflected a normally stable and continuous cosmic order. “That’s why this order was disrupted on the occasion of a solar or even lunar eclipse and then interpreted as a bad omen for the world,” says Galindo.
For the ancient Mayans, whose reputation as ruthless architects and astronomers of their time endures through buildings and a sparse documentary record that survived the conquest, the scene in which the moon partially or completely devours the light of the sun’s disk was represented by the “Sun “eaten”, a glyph formed by the darkened sun and an animal that looks like a snake that wants to devour it. The Dresden Codex, one of the four known Mayan books, contains a series of numerical reports documenting the observation, study and prediction of solar eclipses over a period of approximately 33 years. According to Galindo Trejo, the code contains a table of “dates corresponding to solar and lunar eclipses, in addition to the days separating two consecutive solar and lunar eclipses.” The calculations go beyond the Maya area as they include at least 18 eclipses that could not be observed from the Yucatan Peninsula, an example of the “advancement of knowledge by Maya priest astronomers.”
Six pages from the Dresden Codex, illustrating topics such as eclipses, mathematical operations, and floods.
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