Heroes and Solar Eclipses

I was curious about the solar eclipses depicted in the first and last episodes of this series of Heroes. So I did a little research.

Types of solar eclipses:

Central Total Solar Eclipse - At some moment and viewed from some place on Earth the centres of Sun and Moon coincided and the Sun was completely obscured by the Moon.

Central Annular Solar Eclipse - At some moment and viewed from some place on Earth the centres of Sun and Moon coincided but the Sun was not completely obscured by the Moon, leaving a brilliant 'ring' around the dark Moondisk.

Partial Solar Eclipse - At no instant and nowhere on Earth there was a total or annular eclipse, but the Moon obscured the Sun partially.

There are other variations but you get the idea...

Back to Heroes.

(1) Did a solar eclipse occur in Japan in 1671 as depicted in Heroes: How to Stop an Exploding Man?

Eclipse 1671 Sep 03

Two solar eclipses occurred in 1671 that were visible in the northern hemisphere. One was a brief partial eclipse of the Sun (grey shaded area on diagram) in eastern Asia and Japan on September 3, 1671. However, it was not visible in Japan because the sun was setting or had just set at the time of the eclipse (light grey shaded area on diagram.) The other was also a partial solar eclipse, occured on April 9 and was only visible in Greenland and on the east coast of Canada.

At the end of Heroes episode, How to Stop an Exploding Man, (the scene is actually a preview for the next series) there is what appears to be a total or near-total eclipse. Subtitles indicate the locale is Japan in 1671. Perhaps in the Heroes universe this apparent eclipse will turn out to be something else entirely. The moon is not the only object that might pass between the Earth and the Sun in an imagined universe.

(2) Did a solar eclipse occur in North America in 2006 as depicted in Heroes: Genesis?

Genesis, the first episode of Heroes, was set (I think) in September of 2006 and this episode depicted a solar eclipse, apparently more or less coincident with the awakening of our Heroes' powers.

Eclipse Painting

In fact, there were no total solar eclipses visible from anywhere on the Earth's surface in September 2006. There was only one total solar eclipse in all of 2006 and that occurred on March 29, 2006. It was not visible from North America. The other solar eclipse in 2006 was an annular eclipse visible on September 22 across the Atlantic Ocean in the southern hemisphere.

(3) This leads me to the following conclusions.

Maybe Heroes' writers really did intend to depict solar eclipses. Whether or not the eclipses actually occured in our reality doesn't matter. Heroes is a fictional story set in a universe that is very similar to our own but different in key ways that serve the story. E.g., Some people have super powers.

Or, Heroes' writers depicted something eclipsing the Sun, but it was not our Moon!

Interesting, eh?

References:

http://www.eclipse.org.uk - Look up the eclipse of your choice by year. Nice maps.
http://www.webmesh.co.uk/nice/eclipse2.htm - A list of eclipses from 1001 to the present.