BEYOND LOCAL: Solar eclipses caused by fantastic celestial coincidence of scale and distance

The following article, written by Christopher Palma, Penn State originally appeared on The Conversation and is published here with permission:

The relatively small size of the Moon and its shadow make eclipses truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. On average, total solar eclipses are visible somewhere on Earth once every few years. But from any one location on Earth, it is roughly 375 years between solar eclipses. The fact that solar eclipses happen at all is a bit of a numerical coincidence. It just so happens that the Sun is approximately 400 times larger than the Moon and also 400 times more distant from the Earth.

Path of totality When the Earth, Moon and Sun line up perfectly, the Moon casts a shadow onto the Earth. Since the Moon is round, its shadow is round as it lands on Earth. The only people who see the eclipse are those in the area on Earth where the shadow lands at a given moment. A tilted orbit Solar eclipses don’t happen every single time the Moon passes in between Earth and the Sun. If that were the case, there would be a solar eclipse every month.

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