Monday Astronomy Picture Ponderings 5/9/2022
Eclipsing the Sun
Welcome back to the Monday Astronomy Picture Ponderings (MAPPs) series where every Monday I normally pick one of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) entries from the past seven days to focus on in some way.
On May 2nd, 2022, NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a copyrighted image of the partial solar eclipse over Argentina two days before. The feature image above is a public domain image of a partial eclipse for our article today. So what is a solar eclipse? What about a partial one? Can solar eclipses happen on places other than Earth? Let’s find out!
What is a (partial) solar eclipse)?
Very briefly, a solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, briefly blocking out the light from the Sun, totally or partially.
But, if the moon orbits the Earth once every 28 days, shouldn’t it pass between the Earth and the Sun pretty frequently? Shouldn’t we have a solar eclipse on a pretty frequent basis?
The moon has to line up perfectly with the Sun and the Earth for an eclipse to occur. Since the moon’s orbit isn’t perfectly circular and is tilted about 5 degrees in relation to Earth’s orbit, the geometry doesn’t quite line up every month. On average, every year we have about 2–5 eclipses, with only up to two being total.
In the hours and minutes leading up to the eclipse in the path of totality, viewers witness the dark orb of the moon slowly block out the light of the Sun bit by bit, shown sped up in the timelapse video below.
If you are not in the exact right path of totality, but close, viewers will see a partial solar eclipse in which you see the moon slowly cover the Sun up to a point, but not completely. The exact amount covered will depend on how close…
