A total solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's ascending node of orbit on Saturday, March 7, 1970,[1][2][3][4][5][6] with a magnitude of 1.0414.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness.

Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide.

[7] The greatest eclipse occurred over Mexico at 11:38 am CST, with totality lasting 3 minutes and 27.65 seconds.

Inclement weather obstructed the viewing from that location and most of the eclipse path through the remainder of the southern states.

Totality was visible across southern Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Nantucket, Massachusetts in the United States, northeast to the Maritimes of eastern Canada, and northern Miquelon-Langlade in the French overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

Miahuatlán offered particularly good observation conditions with an altitude of 1,620 metres above sea level, high air quality and solar zenith angle of 63° at the time of the eclipse.

[11] Austrian-American physicist Erwin Saxl and American physicist Mildred Allen reported anomalous changes in the period of a torsion pendulum when observing a partial solar eclipse with a magnitude of 0.954 from Harvard, Massachusetts, called the "Saxl Effect".

Their appearance and longitude are irregular due to a lack of synchronization with the anomalistic month (period of perigee).