Customer Reviews

Fifty Year Canon Solar Eclipses, 1986-2035

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This is the definitive book to take to eclipses. Espenak is the eclipse expert for NASA and has all the math and software to generate the tables which make up this canon.

Everything else one hears or reads about where and when the eclipse will be, is just third through twelfth hand recounting and mis-recounting of the information in this book. It is not fun reading - it is a book of tables of numbers.

But careful reading and interpolation with an accurate map (or a GPS) and an accurate watch will get you the exact local time of second and third contacts and the actual location of centerline.

That doesn't seem like such a big deal until one is actually on the ground the day before the eclipse. One had been unconsciously expecting that somebody locally would have all the information, and then you find out that they had been assuming that you, the rich, educated foreigner, would know.

The actual real information is to be found only in this book. Don't leave home for an eclipse without it.

I own this book as well as its companion canon on lunar eclipses. I find them both to be convenient and valuable references whenever I need to find information about past or present eclipses (which I do a lot more often than you might imagine).

What I find most useful are the maps of individual eclipses over a 50-year span and the maps of all total and annular eclipses worldwide over the much longer period of 1901-2100.