Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Eclipse thoughts

Thinking about today's lunar eclipse, I was wondering  what it would look like if you were standing on the moon looking at an eclipse of the sun by Earth. Sure enough, someone has painted a rendering of it - a red rim around the Earth that would last for hours.
It is quite a coincidence that the moon is almost exactly the right size to cover the sun as seen from Earth.
Apparently the moon can appear slightly larger or smaller than the sun depending where it is in its elliptical orbit around Earth, hence there can be a "supermoon" solar eclipse or a "micromoon" solar eclipse.
That got me thinking, what would an eclipse of the sun by the moon look like if you were on the dark side of the moon? It would be a narrow path of totality about 60 miles wide, and there would be a red penumbra around it. Do you think you'd be able to see it with the naked eye if you were standing on the moon? Here's an animation of the path of totality: 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Search This Blog

Followers