Which eclipses are rare

That creates a solar eclipse. But it is also about times farther away. It gives the eclipse its perfect fit so that the bodies exactly overlap. On March 9, , people in Mumbai, India, gather at the Nehru planetarium to view a solar eclipse. Rather, its orbit is an ellipse. When the moon is farther away, it appears to be smaller.

The sun becomes only partly covered because the moon appears too small to block it entirely. An eclipse that occurs at this point is known as an annular eclipse. The effect is still striking, but it lacks the dazzle of a total eclipse. No clear sky, no eclipse for you. Because of the tilt of the Earth and the location of the moon and sun, eclipses are only viewable along a specific path.

Since that path always changes, seeing an eclipse is rare for most people. The total eclipse that will be viewable from the U. Oftentimes, a full moon will glance the outer edge of earth's shadow, resulting in a "penumbral" eclipse in which the moon is slightly darkened the last penumbral eclipse was in October If only a portion of the moon disappears behind Earth's shadow, it results in a partial eclipse, the last of which occurred in April When a full moon is completely hidden behind the Earth's shadow, or umbra, a total lunar eclipse occurs, usually turning the moon a brown or red color.

The last total eclipse occurred in April this year. The rarest type of eclipse however, a blood supermoon, occurs when the fully eclipsed moon is closest to the Earth in its respective orbit, making it appear 14 percent larger in the night sky than normal.

And when that happens, it's truly a sight to behold. So if the moon is fully hidden, why is it red and not completely blacked out, as one would expect? That means that most of the time the moon eclipses the sun, the shadow it casts falls either above the Earth or below it. Here on the ground, the sun looks just as it always does. When the moon is farther away, it appears to be smaller. An eclipse that occurs at this point is known as an annular eclipse, with the sun becoming only partly obscured, because the moon appears too small to block it entirely.

The effect is still striking, but it lacks the dazzle of totality. No clear sky, no eclipse for you.