March 1504 lunar eclipse
| Total eclipse | |||||||||||||||||
Woodcut of Columbus' prediction of the lunar eclipse to the native Jamaicans, taken from Camille Flammarion, Astronomie populaire: Description générale du ciel (Paris, 1880), p. 231. | |||||||||||||||||
| 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 | ||||||||||||||||
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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, but Columbus himself attributed the prediction to the Almanach by Abraham Zacuto.