Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses

Key data from NASA's solar eclipse catalog queryable as JSON

NASA's Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses provides details of all solar eclipses occurring over the period -1999 to [phone] BCE to 3000 CE). This public domain data is available at 5MCSE.

An extract of this data - specifically the summary data for each solar eclipse - is available via a web service.

Acknowledgement:

• Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Request format

Request eclipses between a start and end year as follows:

JavaScript

axios({
	"method": "GET",
	"url": "https://api.radiantdrift.com/solar-eclipse/catalog/[YEAR_FROM]/[YEAR_TO]",
	"params": {
		"apiKey": [YOUR_API_KEY],
		["saros": [SAROS_CYCLE],]
		["primaryType": [ECLIPSE_TYPE]]
	},
	"headers": {
		"Accept-Encoding": "deflate, gzip, br",
		"Cache-Control": "max-age=86400"
	}
})

cURL

You can optionally specify a Saros cycle number and/or an eclipse type, where valid eclipse types are:

• P Partial Eclipse

• A Annular Eclipse

• T Total Eclipse

• H Hybrid or Annular/Total Eclipse

Example

The following request returns the Hybrid eclipses in Saros cycle 137 between the years 1000 and 2500:

GET https://api.radiantdrift.com/solar-eclipse/catalog/1000/2500?saros=137&primaryType=H

The expected response is as follows (abbreviated for length):

{
  "query": {
    "name": "solar-eclipse/catalog/1000/2500",
    "yearFrom": 1000,
    "yearTo": 2500,
    "credit": "Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC",
    "eclipseType": "H",
    "saros": "137"
  },
  "response": [
    {
      "catalog": 8821,
      "year": 1713,
      "month": "Dec",
      "day": 17,
      "greatestTD": 0.669675926,
      "deltaT": 9,
      "lunation": -3538,
      "saros": 137,
      "eclipseType": "H",
      "qle": "p-",
      "gamma": 0.7249,
      "mag": 1.0094,
      "sLat": "23N",
      "sLng": "65W",
      "sunAlt": 43,
      "pathWidthKM": "47",
      "sCentralDuration": "00m56s",
      "lat": 23,
      "lng": -65,
      "centraDurationSec": 56,
      "isoDate": "1713-12-17T00:00:00Z",
      "eclipseTypeQualifier": null,
      "eclipseTypePrimary": "H",
      "countryISO": null,
      "mrgID": 1912,
      "tzID": "Etc/GMT+4"
    },
    {
      "catalog": 8867,
      "year": 1731,
      "month": "Dec",
      "day": 29,
      "greatestTD": 0.03255787,
      "deltaT": 11,
      "lunation": -3315,
      "saros": 137,
      "eclipseType": "H",
...
  ]
}

In this case, the array included in the response property conforms to the following Typescript type:

export type FiveMCSERecord = {
  catalog: number;
  year: number;
  month: string;
  day: number;
  greatestTD: number;
  deltaT: number;
  lunation: number;
  saros: number;
  eclipseType: string;
  qle: string;
  gamma: number;
  mag: number;
  sLat: string;
  sLng: string;
  sunAlt: number;
  pathWidthKM: string | null;
  sCentralDuration: string | null;
  lat: number;
  lng: number;
  centraDurationSec: number;
  isoDate: string;
  eclipseTypeQualifier: string | null;
  eclipseTypePrimary: string;
  countryISO: string | null;
  mrgID: number | null;
  tzID: string;
}

Fields

Except as noted below, the fields returned in the response correspond directly to the source NASA data, except that field names are camel-cased. Please refer to the Key to Catalog of Solar Eclipses for details.

Field	Type	Comments
sLat	string	NASA's Lat. field in text form
sLng	string	NASA's Long. field in text form
sCentralDuration	string	NASA's Central Dur. field in text form
lat	number	Latitude of greatest eclipse in degrees, positive north, to nearest whole degree
lng	number	Longitude of greatest eclipse in degrees, positive east, to nearest whole degree
centraDurationSec	number	Duration of totality or annularity at location of greatest eclipse, in seconds
isoDate	string	Midnight of date of eclipse in ISO Date format. Gregorian Calendar is used for dates after 1582 Oct 15. Julian Calendar is used for dates before 1582 Oct 04.
eclipseTypeQualifier	string | null	The second character of NASA's Ecl. Type field.
eclipseTypePrimary	string	The first character of NASA's Ecl. Type field. These are broken out separately for indexing and data querying efficiency reasons.
countryISO	string | null	2-letter ISO country code corresponding the modern day country at the lat/lng of the point of greatest eclipse. Null if point does not lie within a country.
mrgID	number | null	Marine Resources numeric ID corresponding to the sea or ocean at the lat/lng of the point of greatest eclipse. Null if the point lies over land. This field and the countryISO field are useful for general characterization of the location of greatest eclipse in user interfaces.
tzID	string	The modern Time Zone ID corresponding to the point of greatest eclipse.