News Excerpt:

The moon will blot out the sun for millions of people in North America along a path crossing from Mexico into the United States and then Canada in a total solar eclipse occurring on Monday, April 8, 2024.

About the news:

• Eclipses, whether solar or lunar, occur because of the periodic alignments of the Sun, Earth, and the Moon. These three bodies orbit in space in very predictable paths.
• Solar Eclipses happen when the moon moves between the Earth and the Sun. 
• One might think this should happen every month since the moon’s orbit is about 27 and 29 days long. But the moon’s orbit is tilted by about five degrees with respect to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. So, sometimes the moon misses too high and sometimes too low to cause a solar eclipse. 
• Only when the sun, moon, and the Earth line up close to the “line of nodes”, the imaginary line that represents the intersection of the orbital planes of the moon and Earth, can there be an eclipse.

There are Four Types of Eclipses:

• Not all solar eclipses are the same. The distance between the Sun, the Moon, and Earth plays an important role in what type of solar eclipse we get.
• Depending on your location and the specific geometry of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, there are four types of solar eclipses; Total, Partial, Annular, and Hybrid. 
  • A TOTAL ECLIPSE happens when the moon completely covers the sun. Here, the observer is standing under the umbral shadow of the moon. 
    • In places along the path of totality, people will be able to view the sun's corona - the sun's outer atmosphere - that typically is not visible because of solar brightness.
  • A PARTIAL ECLIPSE occurs when the moon passes in front of the sun, off-center and only a portion of the sun’s disk is obscured. 
    • Here, the observer is standing in the penumbral shadow of the moon.
  • AN ANNULAR ECLIPSE occurs when the moon passes dead center in front of the sun but, because the moon’s orbit is elliptical and is sometimes closer and sometimes further from Earth, it appears too small to fully cover the disk of the sun. 
    • Here, a bright ring called the “ring of fire” appears around the dark disk of the moon. 
    • In an annular eclipse, the moon’s umbral shadow comes to focus – to a point – above the Earth’s surface.

• • • The name annular eclipse comes from the world of mathematics, where a ring shape is known as an annulus.
  • A HYBRID ECLIPSE is a combination of total and annular eclipses. The eclipse begins as one type and ends as another.