Friday, April 08, 2005

Emanations and Penumbras

From Space.com:

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Partial eclipse: The Moon covers only part of the Sun.

Total eclipse: The Moon covers the entire disk of the Sun along a narrow path across the Earth.

Annular eclipse: The Moon is too far from Earth to completely cover the Sun. A thin ring of the Sun's disk surrounds the Moon.

I like that "not to scale" caveat.

Two things I learned from the article: 1. The moon's shadow gets wider and then narrower as it travels across the earth's surface. That never occurred to me and I don't remember anyone saying that. And 2. Eclipses happen about once every year and a half.

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