An annular solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Friday, November 1, 1929, with a magnitude of 0.9649. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide. Occurring about 6 days before apogee (on November 7, 1929, at 11:00 UTC), the Moon's apparent diameter was smaller.
Annularity was visible from Spanish Sahara (today's West Sahara), French West Africa (parts now belonging to Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, and the southwestern tip of Benin), British Gold Coast (today's Ghana), French Togoland (today's Togo) including capital Lomé, Portuguese São Tomé and PrÃÂncipe (today's São Tomé and PrÃÂncipe), French Equatorial Africa (parts now belonging to Gabon and R. Congo) including capital Brazzaville, Belgian Congo (today's DR Congo) including capital Léopoldville, Northern Rhodesia (today's Zambia), British Tanganyika (now belonging to Tanzania) including capital Dar es Salaam, and British Seychelles (today's Seychelles) including capital Victoria. A partial eclipse was visible for most of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
Shown below are two tables displaying details about this particular solar eclipse. The first table outlines times at which the Moon's penumbra or umbra attains the specific parameter, and the second table describes various other parameters pertaining to this eclipse.
This eclipse is part of an eclipse season, a period, roughly every six months, when eclipses occur. Only two (or occasionally three) eclipse seasons occur each year, and each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months (173 days) later; thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. In the sequence below, each eclipse is separated by a fortnight.