Eclipse what is

From the Editors at Merriam-Webster. Helium: This Word Brought to You by a Phrases Related to eclipse into eclipse. Style: MLA. Kids Definition of eclipse Entry 1 of 2.

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What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? The last solar eclipse took place on February 27, , and was visible over South America and Africa. The next solar eclipse will occur over the U. The town with the best view of the celestial phenomenon is Hopkinsville, Ken.

Check out our solar eclipse countdown for more information about solar eclipses. Lunar eclipses are also rare events, but you can view them at any location with a view of the moon. This is the same concept that gives us colorful sunrises and sunsets. A lunar eclipse only happens during a full moon.

Early eastern Europeans believed that the red lunar eclipse was the sign of a demon escaping from the moon, and would throw rocks at the moon to stop the demon.

Natives in the Americas shared this wonder about lunar eclipses, believing that their moon god was communicating with them during an eclipse.

Two conditions have to be met for a solar eclipse to occur. The first concerns the relationship between the orbits of Earth and the Moon, which are not in the same plane, but are inclined at around 5 degrees 5 degrees 8' 43" to each other. The Moon crosses the plane of Earth's orbit twice in each complete orbit. For an eclipse to occur the Moon must be near one of these intersection points or nodes. The second condition is that the Sun, Earth and the Moon must also be lined up, corresponding to the phase of the New Moon.

The Moon's shadow consists of two cone-shaped areas see Figure 1 , known as the umbra externally tangent to the Sun and Moon and the penumbra internally tangent to the Sun and Moon.

For an observer standing between the Moon and the umbra cone summit the eclipse is total. If the observer is beyond the cone summit, the eclipse is annular ring-like : the apparent diameter of the Moon is too small to mask the whole solar disk. For an observer standing in the penumbra, only a part of the Sun is masked: the eclipse is partial.