English

Hierarchical Eclipses

Popular Physics 2020-06-02 v2 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Geophysics History and Philosophy of Physics

Abstract

The obscuration of a celestial body that covers another one in the background will be called a ``hierarchical eclipse''. The most obvious case is that a star or a planet will be hidden from sight by the moon during a lunar eclipse. Four objects of the solar system will line up then. We investigate this phenomenon with respect to the region of visibility and periodicity. There exists a parallax field constraining the chances for observation. A historic account from the Middle Ages is preserved that we analyse from different viewing angles. Furthermore, we provide a list of events from 0 to 4000 AD. From this, it is apparent that Jupiter is most often involved in such spectacles because its orbit inclination is small. High-inclination orbits reduce the probability to have a coincidence of an occultation of that object with a lunar eclipse.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.07131,
  title  = {Hierarchical Eclipses},
  author = {Emil Khalisi and Joachim Gripp},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.07131},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

6 pages, 4 figs, 1 tab

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:33:16.595Z