How often does the solar eclipse occur?
Question:
Answer:
Hi Jeremy!
You can have between 2 and 5 solar eclipses per year. It is impossible to have fewer than two, or more than five.
It works something like this. Each 346 days, there are two eclipse "seasons" when the sun, earth and moon are in alignment to cause eclipses. During each eclipse season, there must be at least two eclipses, one of the sun and one of the moon. In addition, there is a possibility of a third eclipse in an eclipse season. So, possibly, there could be four solar eclipses.
Since there are two eclipse seasons every 346 days, it is possible to have a third season in a calendar year if the first season falls in January. In such a case, an additional solar eclipse might happen in December, making five. The last time this happened was in 1935, and it will occur again in 2206.
Not all solar eclipses are total, of course. On average, you get a total eclipse of the sun every 1.58 years, and in some years there are none at all.
In rare cases, you can get two total solar eclipses in a calendar year. The next time this will happen is 2057.
It is impossible to get three totals in a year. This is because the moon must also be closer to the earth than average to make the eclipse total. Usually, after the moon lines up for a total eclipse, the next eclipse season it will be near the far point of its orbit, so that earth will see an annular eclipse of the sun, not a total.
Frequently. Click on these links to learn more:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/ec...
On average, there's a solar eclipse about every 18 months... however, there are different types of eclipses. And eclipses are only visible from very limited areas of the Earth at any one time... the Path of Shadow can be only a few miles wide and dozens or even hundreds of miles long... but, when taking into account the entire surface of the Earth, that's a very small slice :) (plus, there's a lot of ocean... some eclipses are not visible from land)
A Total Eclipse is when the Moon completely blocks the disk of the Sun.
An Annular Eclipse is when the Moon passes in front of the Sun but doesn't completely block the disk of the Sun.
A Partial Eclipse is when the Moon passes in front of the Sun but only blocks part of the Sun's disk.
And, last but not least, there's the Hybrid Eclipse... that's an eclipse that is viewable in some locations as a Total Eclipse and in other locations as an Annular Eclipse... very rare :)
More Questions & Answers...