Solar Eclipses – Part I – Things You May Not Know OBLIGATORY SAFETY NOTE: Never look directly at the sun without protective lenses designed for looking at the sun. Even multiple layers of regular welding glass are not sufficient protection! Call us at the store for more information. While our latest lunar eclipse was a bust for observing, we can still look forward to the partial solar eclipse happening in two weeks. I will assume that we all know what a solar eclipse is, but today we’ll quickly touch on a few things you may not know about solar eclipses. One of the most commonly overlooked things about solar eclipses is that they can only happen during the New Moon (likewise, a lunar eclipse can only happen during the full moon). It may seem like a “no-brainer” to some, but I’ve told this to friends who aren’t so familiar with orbital mechanics, and it makes the whole process make sense to them. In addition to that, because the orbits of both Earth and Moon are not circular (they are ellipses), both Sun and Moon appear as slightly different sizes. This gives us three different types of solar eclipses. A total eclipse, the rarest of the three types, only happens when the moon is in the closest part of its orbit, and the sun is at its farthest. In this situation, the sun appears smaller than the moon, and the moon completely blocks the sunlight from our point of observation. Just before totality, we can see Bailey Beads; dots of sunshine shining past an all-but-eclipsing moon. A partial eclipse occurs when only part of the sun is blocked out by the moon. The amount of blockage can be totally unnoticeable to the naked eye, or it may be so nearly complete that only a small amount of light peeks out from behind the moon. When the moon is at its farthest from us, and we are at our closest to the sun, we get an “annular” eclipse, where most of the sun is blocked out, except for a ring around the moon. There are other aspects to an eclipse, but I’ve only got 300 words to get my message through each week. Upcoming Solar Eclipse (video shows what it would look like in central Canada – the sun won’t set during the eclipse when viewed from Vancouver) timeanddate/eclipse/solar/2014-october-23 Total Eclipse (source: BBC Wonders of the Solar System) – video, 3 minute run time: https://youtube/watch?v=eOvWioz4PoQ “Bailey Beads” – image: goo.gl/biEwNL Partial Eclipse – time lapse image: goo.gl/ty0kQS Annular Eclipse – image: goo.gl/YWCWN4
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 07:05:00 +0000
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