What is a solar eclipse ?
Question:
Answer:
An eclipse of the Sun (or solar eclipse) can only occur at New Moon when the Moon passes between Earth and Sun. If the Moon's shadow happens to fall upon Earth's surface at that time, we see some portion of the Sun's disk covered or 'eclipsed' by the Moon. Since New Moon occurs every 29 1/2 days, you might think that we should have a solar eclipse about once a month. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen because the Moon's orbit around Earth is tilted 5 degrees to Earth's orbit around the Sun. As a result, the Moon's shadow usually misses Earth as it passes above or below our planet at New Moon. At least twice a year, the geometry lines up just right so that some part of the Moon's shadow falls on Earth's surface and an eclipse of the Sun is seen from that region.
The Moon's shadow actually has two parts:
Penumbra - Faint outer shadow; partial eclipses are seen from within this shadow.
Umbra- Dark inner shadow; total eclipses are seen from within this shadow.
blocking of Sun's light by Moon: an eclipse in which the Moon blocks all or part of the Sun's light from reaching the Earth's surface, because it passes directly between the Earth and the Sun
its simple.Earth rotates around the sun and the moon rotates around the earth, when the moon comes in between earth and sun, its called a solar eclipse.
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