The Saros Eclipse Cycle | Friday Science

Understanding the orbital periods of the moon leads to the Saros Cycle, an 18 year repeating pattern of solar and lunar eclipses. Bob the Science Guy goes through the derivation of the Saros Cycle and the resulting patterns of solar eclipses.

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[kaibroeking]

A friend of mine, who is an astronomer, a mathematician and an optics designer discovered an 84-year cycle in total lunar eclipses (the gentleman turns 93 this summer):
He remembered his mother telling him that a total lunar eclipse happened the day before he was born, i.e. on 15th June 1927…. The day before his 84th birthday, there was another one.
Funnily, there was no mention in the literature of an 84-year-cycle, so he published his finding pointing out that it was of minor importance since the phenomenon will surely go unnoticed by anyone not of that age, yet.

[MartinJames]

29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds? Now you know why medieval Muslims made such stunning advances in astronomy (without telescopes) and mathematics. You're supposed to know EXACTLY when Ramadan begins and ends, or at least the Ulama are so they can tell you. The office of muwaqqit or "timekeeper" was more or less coterminous with what we'd now call an astronomer or mathematician. Ibn al-Shatir (1304-75) was the muwaqqit of the very prestigious Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the astronomer from whose work and tables Mikolaj Kopernik derived the most. Strangely, however, he's the only one of a clutch of his Muslim predecessors, going back as far as Al-Battani, whom Kopernik doesn't name, acknowledge and refer to. He was the closest to Kopernik's time, of course, and it's a fair guess that, though Kopernik had access to Al-Shatir's charts and tables (he actually made a transcription error in one of them) he didn't know his name. Political circumstances in the 15th and early 16th centuries make that the most likely, as well as the most charitable, explanation. Unlike all those mentioned by Kopernik (as well as many others) Al-Shatir was never given a silly Latin name -as Kopernik was himself, of course. At least he escaped that indignity!

[Ken-fhjc]

This is by far the best explanation of this I’ve ever seen.

[earthrise]

I never really did know anything about the Saros cycle, other than the fact that it existed. Very fascinating !

[jonpaddick]

Great stuff, Bob. More content like this, please.

[TheKitsuneCavalier]

WOW! Great stuff! I only scratched the surface of saros cycles, when I was looking into the total solar eclipse of September 22, 1968, and definitely a brushing up of what I did learn also helped. Thank you.

[Wolfie]

Thanks Bob, very educational. Always learning more.

[braakiamonkly]

You know the Flerfs will just say prove it then go into a rant about how it's all wrong because Nu - uhh reasons.

[derekwhidden]

Really good video. And you are chopping this subject into easily digestable chunks as well. Good job!

I was just reading an article last night that was explaining the orbital mechanics of stars around Sagittarius A, how the orbits process and make a rosette pattern. But the article was really long and there was only so much I could sit there and read.

[djpodesta]

This lesson was really quite interesting!

[roundthinker]

One of the things that always amazed me is one of the texts in the Talmud, where it said that the lunar cycle is 29 days, 12 hours and 793/1080 of an hour (=44 minutes, 3 seconds and 1/3 of a second), and that it was known more than 2000 years ago by that much of accuracy.

[kmcNorway]

Thank you! I needed it explained in this format to understand it.

[sewalker]

Very good information, sir. I appreciate your educating videos.

[MrZiypah]

Sir now I see.. i used to didn't like the content, because mostly it was about flttards.. but now I'm learning stuff i didn't know before. Thank you.

[neiloflongbeck]

The ancient Mesopotamians and other cultures know that after 235 lunar months the Moon's phases would repeat again. For example, if the new moon was in Taurus, then after 235 lunar months then it would be in Taurus again in exactly the same spot. 235 lunar months is about an hour longer than 19 Earth years, which is why the number 19 appears in many methods of calculating the date of Easter Sunday. This is known as the Metonic cycle.

[waedi]

Great show ! The last fullmoon was outstanding bright and big, wonderful view.

[dcfromthev]

Well hi everyone, and greetings from Northern California.

[joedeshon]

Absolutely perfect, Bob. I wish Mr Thrive and Survive, who claims to know everything but actually knows nothing about eclipses, would come to this Channel and watch this video and leave a comment stating one thing that is wrong with the video. Actually, he couldn't find anything. But I bet he'd just hand wave It Off completely.

[davidnievesjr.]

I never knew about this. Thanks, Dr. Bob.

[brettw]

So awesome to see some facinating science! The flat earth (and their ilk) have become SO boring! Keep up the great work.