What are the farthest points north and south that total solar and lunar eclipses can occur?

Question

I was just reading about today's total solar eclipse, which was visible in Siberia, and I got to wondering, what are the farthest points north and south that total eclipses can occur? Can they occur at the poles?

Answer 1

The Moon routinely passes both North and South of the Earth in it's orbit.  Most of the time, the Moon's shadow misses the Earth.  So eclipses can occur at the poles.  There isn't any dry ground at the North Pole. You could see one from an airplane. But we had an antarctic eclipse just a few years ago.

Answer 2

Lunar eclipses are seen all over the globe.

A solar eclipse is a bit more tricky. The can be seen all over the globe, but at the poles a total is very rare (by human standards, anyway).

Here is a map with solar eclipses mapped from 1784 to 2213. You will notice the rarity of a total eclipse at either pole.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSE/5MCSE...

HTH

Charles

Answer 3

Solar eclipses can theoretically happen anywhere on the earth where you can see the sun.  Think about it this way, during any new moon, there is a point in space near the earth where the shadow of the moon falls.  (the moon is always casting a shadow in space behind it) Sometimes we get lucky and that shadow lands on the earth and we call it an eclipse.  But there is always a shadow, and as the moon orbits the earth and passes by the sun every month during the new moon, the shadow usually passes above or below the earth.  Of course, it could happen to just graze the top or bottom of the earth and cause an eclipse at one of the poles.  You don't hear of that happening very often because of random chance--the poles are a small target, just like New York city is a small target.  How often does New York get a total solar eclipse?  Not very often, but just as often as any other random spot on the earth.  



An eclipse of the moon happens on the entire earth/sun facing side of the moon, so it is visible from any part of the earth that is facing the moon at the moment of the eclipse.  In other words, during any lunar eclipse, about half of the earth (the half facing the moon) can see the lunar eclipse.

Answer 4

the arctic and antarctic circles, in their respective summers.

this is when an eclipse happens at local midnight, so an observer will see the eclipse happening at the northern/southern horizon. since the earth is tilted toward teh sun, the northernmost point of the eclipse is "north" of the north pole, or the southernmost point is "south" of the south pole.

the 2003 eclipse in antarctica was a good example of this.