Today's Eclipse. Help me understand what I witnessed.
(media.greatawakening.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (48)
sorted by:
You do not see the moon because it is in New Moon phase. The sun is behind it. When you see the moon, either during the day or night, it is because it is reflecting light from the sun, at different angles, which gives us the phases of the moon.
Yes, but once the moon gets further away from the sun in the sky, at least part of it should be illuminated and visible!
The moon isn't getting farther away from the sun. The earth is turning away from the lined up sun and moon. That's why there is a path of totality. The sun and moon stay lined up in relation to the earth for much longer than any one place experiences totality.
The moon gets a tiny bit further from the earth every year. In a few hundred years or so, we won't experience total eclipses anymore.
Per NASA this is only 3.78cm per year and has a very slightly elliptical orbit. It can be calculated out exactly when there will be no more total eclipses seen on earth... this is going to be in 563 million years. Its rate of moving away is also slowing down... in like15 billion years it will no longer be moving away. But we will be swallowed up by our sun expanding in about 6-7 billion years... so we're married tot he moon and to total eclipses for quite a while longer than a few hundred years. Fun stuff though. (I did not downvote you)