Series member 30
Series member 39
Saros cycle series 135 for solar eclipses occurs at the Moon's ascending node, repeating every 18 years, 11 days, containing 71 eclipses, including 53 umbral eclipses (45 annular, 2 hybrid, 6 total). The longest duration of totality will be 2 minutes, 27 seconds on May 12, 2431 while the longest annular was 10 minutes 14 seconds on 24 December 1601.
This solar saros is linked to Lunar Saros 128.
This series included the smallest annular solar eclipse in the 2nd millennium on 24 December 1601, with an eclipse magnitude of only 0.90785, just 0.002% larger than the solar eclipse of 12 November 1683 BCE, which was the smallest annular solar eclipse of thousands of years, with an eclipse magnitude of only 0.90783.
The factors that made this such a small annular solar eclipse were:
- The Earth being very near perihelion (closest approach from the Sun in its elliptical orbit, making its angular diameter nearly as large as possible). This occurs around January 3.
- The Moon being nearly exactly at apogee (making its angular diameter as small as possible). The moment of greatest eclipse was just a day before apogee.
- The midpoint of the eclipse being Sun very close to the horizon, where the eclipse magnitude is the smallest.