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© NASA
The first solar eclipse of 2011 occurs at the Moon's ascending node in eastern Sagittarius. A partial eclipse will be visible from much of Europe, North Africa and central Asia (Figure 1).

The penumbral shadow first touches Earth's surface in northern Algeria at 06:40:11 UT. As the shadow travels east, Western Europe will be treated to a partial eclipse at sunrise. The eclipse magnitude [1] from European cities like Madrid (0.576), Paris (0.732), London (0.747), and Copenhagen (0.826) will give early morning risers an excellent opportunity to photograph the sunrise eclipse with interesting foreground scenery.

Greatest eclipse [2] occurs at 08:50:35 UT in northern Sweden where the eclipse in the horizon will have a magnitude of 0.858. At that time, the axis of the Moon's shadow will pass a mere 510 km above Earth's surface. Most of northern Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia also lie in the penumbra's path. The citizens of Cairo (0.551), Jerusalem (0.574), Istanbul (0.713), and Tehran (0.507) all witness a large magnitude partial eclipse.

A sunset eclipse will be visible from central Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and northwest China. The partial eclipse ends when the penumbra leaves Earth at 11:00:54 UT.

Local circumstances and eclipse times for a number of cities in the penumbral path are listed in Table 1. All times are in Universal Time. The Sun's altitude and azimuth, the eclipse magnitude and eclipse obscuration [3] are all given at the instant of maximum eclipse. When the eclipse is in progress at sunrise or sunset, this information is indicated by a '-'.

The NASA JavaScript Solar Eclipse Explorer is an interactive web page that can quickly calculate the local circumstances of the eclipse from any geographic location not included in Table 1 here.

This is the 14th eclipse of Saros 151 [4] (Espenak and Meeus, 2006). The family begins with a series of 18 partial eclipses from 1776 to 2083. Complete details for the entire series of 72 eclipses (in the order: 18 partial, 6 annular, 1 hybrid, 39 total and 8 partial) spanning 1280 years can be found here.

Four partial solar and two total lunar eclipses take place in 2011. This 4:2 combination of solar and lunar eclipses in a single year is rather rare with only six cases during the 21st Century (2011, 2029, 2047, 2065, 2076 and 2094). The first and last eclipses always occur in January and December.

The dates and types of eclipses during 2011 are as follows: Predictions for the eclipses are summarized in Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. World maps show the regions of visibility for each eclipse. The lunar eclipse diagrams also include the path of the Moon through Earth's shadows. Contact times for each principal phase are tabulated along with the magnitudes and geocentric coordinates of the Sun and Moon at greatest eclipse.

All times and dates used in this publication are in Universal Time or UT. This astronomically derived time system is colloquially referred to as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. To learn more about UT and how to convert UT to your own local time, see Time Zones and Universal Time.