Baily Beads Analysis for the Total Solar Eclipse 1979 Feb 26 from Oregon

Introduction

 
The main objective was the determination of the southern umbral limit.
At the time there was still considerable uncertainty in the Moon's orbit and prediction of its position.
For the first time lunar limb corrections based on Watts chart profiles were applied.
The Oregon State University expedition was stationed on a 4 mile North-South stretch north of Madras, OR. More at my blog post from 2012
https://dermuehle.blogspot.com/2012/02/total-solar-eclipse-1979-in-oregon.html

In 1925 three Saros cyles before there had been a similar endeavour from Manhattan, basically from naked eye observations with filter protection.
https://dermuehle.blogspot.com/2013/01/saros-120-eclipses19251979.html

The data for the moon's position and its shape has reached a level of precision which allows for the determination of the photospheric solar radius from observations in the graze zone just inside the umbra.
The module "Baily Bead Analysis" in the Occult software by David Herald is ideally suited for this. See
https://dermuehle.blogspot.com/2024/11/baily-beads-analysis-for-solar-eclipse.html

Occult4 simulations for my location "1+2640" 44.683883° N -121.127917° E 753m WGS84
C2 = 16:13:58.0 UTC  C3 = 16:14:16.0 UTC
-> totality duration = 18.0 sec

 

Lunar limb plots combined for 16:13:58.0 16:14:08.0 16:14:16.0 UTC

 

 

 

 

###