| Total eclipse | |||||||||||||||||
 Drawing of Columbus' prediction of the lunar eclipse to the native Jamaicans, taken from page 273 of "The Romance of Spanish History with Illustrations" by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, 1869. | |||||||||||||||||
| Date | 1 March 1504 | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gamma | 0.4057 | ||||||||||||||||
| Magnitude | 1.0956 | ||||||||||||||||
| Saros cycle | 105 (53 of 74) | ||||||||||||||||
| Totality | 47 minutes, 36 seconds | ||||||||||||||||
| Partiality | 205 minutes, 45 seconds | ||||||||||||||||
| Penumbral | 339 minutes, 40 seconds | ||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
A total lunar eclipse occurred on 1 March 1504, visible at sunset for the Americas, and later over night over Europe and Africa, and near sunrise over Asia.
During his fourth and last voyage, Christopher Columbus induced the inhabitants of Jamaica to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, successfully intimidating them by correctly predicting a total lunar eclipse for 1 March 1504 (visible on the evening of 29 February in the Americas). Some have claimed that Columbus used the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus,[1] but Columbus himself attributed the prediction to the Almanach by Abraham Zacuto.[2]
- ^ Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, 1942, pp. 653–54. Samuel Eliot Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner, 1955, pp. 184-92.
- ^ Kayserling, Meyer (1894). Christopher Columbus and the participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries. Translated by Gross, Charles. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. hdl:2027/hvd.32044004357091.