Solar eclipses on Uranus

When moons of Uranus pass before the Sun

the planet Uranus is seen through the Hubble telescope, its atmosphere defined by bands of electric blue and green. Ariel appears as a white dot floating above it, casting a dark shadow below — HST image from July 26, 2006, of Ariel transiting Uranus, complete with shadow

Solar eclipses on Uranus occur when any of the natural satellites of Uranus passes in front of the Sun as seen from Uranus. Eclipses can occur only near a solar ring plane-crossing of Uranus (equinox), occurring approximately every 42 years, with the last crossing being in 2007/2008.^[1]

For bodies that appear smaller in angular diameter than the Sun, the proper term would be a transit and bodies that are larger than the apparent size of the Sun, the proper term would be an occultation.

Twelve satellites of Uranus—Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon—are large enough and near enough to eclipse the Sun.

All other satellites of Uranus are too small or too distant to produce an umbra.

At its distance from the Sun, the Sun's angular diameter is reduced to a tiny disk about 2 arcminutes across. The angular diameters of the moons large enough to fully eclipse the sun are: Cressida, 6–8'; Desdemona, 6–7'; Juliet, 10–12'; Portia, 9–13'; Rosalind, 4–5'; Belinda, 6–8'; Puck, 6–8'; Miranda, 10–15'; Ariel, 20–23'; Umbriel, 15–17'; Titania, 11–13'; Oberon, 8–9'.

References

^ "Ring-Moon Systems Node - URPX". Pds-rings.seti.org. Retrieved 22 August 2017.

External links

Brufau, Rainer. (2021). Triple shadow phenomena on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus from 1000 CE to 3000 CE (Version 0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5515898

Solar eclipses

Lists of eclipses

By era	Antiquity Middle Ages Modern era 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd Future
Saros series (list)	110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162
Visibility	Australia British Isles China Israel Philippines Russia Turkey Ukraine United States
Historical	Mursili's eclipse (1312 BC) Assyrian eclipse (763 BC) Eclipse of Thales (585 BC) Muhammad's eclipse (632 AD)