The Elusive Fifth Eclipse

摘要

Many years ago I bought the Guinness Book of Records, wherein I found that there could be as many as five solar eclipses in a year. As I knew no more about astronomy than an ordinary person I was rather surprised by the fact, and I resolved to find out how this could happen. I went to the library and learned enough astronomy to give a satisfactory answer for myself. I then became rather interested in eclipses, made some notes and even gave a few popular lectures to schools and societies about them. In this article I present a theoretical model based on some physical data to verify that it is indeed possible to have five solar eclipses in a year.