• Question: What causes a solar eclipse?

    Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam, Sarah on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 24 Jun 2014:


      Solar eclipses happen when the moon’path on the sky takes it exactly between the sun and the earth. So you’re basically in the moon’s shadow on the earth! The shadow only covers part of the earth, so you have to be in the right place at the right time to see one! The reason they don’t happen particularly often is that the moon’s orbit and the earth’s orbit are not at the same angle (flat compared to each other), so they only line up occasionally.

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 24 Jun 2014:


      A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes in front of the sun. Funny enough, the moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but it’s also (by coincidence!) 400 times further away: so when they are exactly lined up, the sun is masked.

      There are 2 solar eclipses every year, but because you can see the moon lined up exactly only from certain spots on the earth, most of the time we don’t get to see those eclipsed (because you’d have to be some strange place to see them, like for example the middle of the Pacific Ocean).

    • Photo: Nate Bastian

      Nate Bastian answered on 25 Jun 2014:


      One of the most impressive coincidences of the solar system, is that the size of the moon and the sun in the sky is almost exactly equal (or course the sun is much much larger, but it is also much further away). So, we get “perfect” eclipses. This was not the case for most of the history of the earth, as the moon was previously much closer, so it would have been much larger in the sky.

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