Solar Eclipses occurrence and its types

21 June 2020 was a rare day- with the solar eclipse and the longest day of the year being on the same day.

Today lets understand the natural phenomenon of Solar eclipse and what are the different types of solar eclipses.

What is a Solar Eclipse?

So we know that Earth revolves around the sun and the moon, around the Earth.

There occurs an instance when the moon crosses the Earth so as casting a shadow of sun on Earth, so as to day- Solar eclipse is the instance when the Earth, moon and Sun are all in the same line.

So now the question is- why isn't there a solar eclipse every month?

There would have been a solar eclipse every month if the axis of the moon would have been perfectly circular, but it is not so.

Since the Moon's orbit is tilted at more than 5 degrees to the Earth's orbit around the sun, its shadow usually misses Earth.

There are actually two types of shadows that moon makes: the umbra is that part of the shadow where all sunlight is blocked out. The umbra takes the shape of a dark, slender cone. It is surrounded by the penumbra, a lighter, funnel-shaped shadow from which sunlight is partially obscured.

Types of Solar Eclipses:

1. Total Eclipse

A total Eclipse is when the umbra that moon casts falls on the Earth, ie. the moon fully covers the sun. And this covering by the moon lets the outer atmosphere of the Sun -the Corona to be exposed.

During any one eclipse, totality occurs at best only in a narrow track on the surface of Earth. This narrow track is called the path of totality.

2. Partial Eclipse

A partial eclipse occurs when the Sun and Moon are not exactly in line with the Earth and the Moon only partially obscures the Sun. This phenomenon can usually be seen from a large part of the Earth outside of the track of an annular or total eclipse.

3. Annular Eclipse

An annular solar eclipse, happens when the Moon is the farthest from the Earth, because of which, it looks smaller and does not block the entire view of the Sun creating a “ring of fire” effect.

An interesting fact is that, the distance of Earth to Sun is 400 times more than the distance from Earth to moon and that the diameter of Sun is about 400 times more than that of Sun, that is why the moon and the sun appear to be of same size, while in realty the Sun is 64million times larger than the moon!!!