Because the half of Earth that faces the sun is larger than the area of the shadow cast by the moon during a solar eclipse, observers may experience a total, annular, or partial eclipse.

Solar eclipses are a cosmic coincidence because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but about 400 times closer to Earth, allowing it to block sunlight for those on Earth within its shadow.

Some maps may incorrectly identify the boundaries of a solar eclipse's totality because they assume the Earth is a smooth surface.

Blood moons only occur during total lunar eclipses, when the Earth blocks the sun, but its atmosphere lets redder parts of sunlight through to reflect off the lunar surface.

While the sun, moon, and stars rise and set from east to west due to Earth's rotation, the moon's eastward revolution around the Earth causes its shadow to move from west to east during a solar eclipse.

Over thousands of years, the frequency of solar eclipses is greatest around the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and lowest near the equator.

Although the moon passes between the sun and Earth each month, its orbit is tilted by five degrees, preventing Earth from experiencing a solar eclipse each month.

Every eclipse is preceded or followed by another eclipse, separated by about two weeks and alternating between solar and lunar types.

Just as directly observing a solar eclipse without protective glasses can cause permanent eye damage, photographing an eclipse requires a specialized filter to prevent damaging your camera.

Eclipse glasses protect the eyes from overexposure to the sun's ultraviolet, blue, and infrared light, as a person's instinct to look away from the sun is diminished when it's partly blocked.

Learn about the sun's corona, which is nonlethal despite a temperature of millions of degrees

The outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere is best seen during a solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the much brighter (and significantly cooler) solar surface. Despite the high-energy particles in the corona moving fast enough to escape the sun's gravity and gradually become solar wind, their density is too low to contribute meaningfully to the region's overall radiation.

A solar eclipse viewer can be made from everyday objects, such as a cereal box, aluminum foil, tape, and paper, to safely view the cosmic event.

View photographs of solar eclipses on Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn caused by the moons of these planets blocking sunlight.

In 2025, the European Space Agency created the first artificial solar eclipse in space when one spacecraft cast a shadow onto another spacecraft to enable observations of the sun's outermost atmosphere.

Because the retina lacks pain receptors, during a solar eclipse, those watching without protective eyewear may suffer from permanent damage without realizing it.

Just before and just after a total solar eclipse, sunlight can pass through uneven terrain on the lunar surface, producing disconnected bits of light around the moon called Baily's beads.

The first scientifically useful photograph of a total solar eclipse was taken in Königsberg, Prussia, on July 28, 1851, using a silver-coated copper plate with a light-sensitive chemical layer.

Research shows that during total solar eclipses, some animals change their behavior to match their nighttime activities.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

The majority of exoplanets—planets outside the solar system—have been discovered through mini-eclipses created when they pass in front of their host star and block some of its light from reaching Earth.

While solar eclipses were considered ominous throughout history, multiple cultures explained the celestial event as the result of mythical creatures nearly consuming the sun.

Global eclipse tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry, with the 2024 total solar eclipse across North America estimated to have generated $6B in economic activity across regions along its path.

See a lunar eclipse share the night sky with the Milky Way

Photos taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in March 2025 captured a blood moon and the Milky Way galaxy within the same field of view. The moon appears red from the bluer parts of its reflected sunlight being scattered by Earth's atmosphere.

Moon's visibility is determined by its declination, equivalent to Earth latitude

The Moon's declination varies between approximately +28.7 degrees and -28.7 degrees, ensuring it rises and sets between latitudes of approximately 61.3 degrees north and south. This means there are places on Earth where the Moon is never visible above the horizon and places where it temporarily does not set.

Electric grids that rely on solar power must compensate for reduced electricity generation during solar eclipses.

Earth’s tilt and orbit cause the sun to create a figure-eight pattern

The shape—called an analemma—can be obtained by photographing the sun from the same location and time daily for a year. The Earth's eccentricity created the analemma's width, and its tilt shifts the sun's height in the sky over the seasons.

In the third century BCE, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos estimated the distance to the moon using geometry after measuring the length of Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse.

If the moon were less than one-twelfth its current distance from Earth, the planet's tidal forces would overcome the moon's internal gravity, tearing it apart and forming a ring of debris.

Our brains trick us into seeing an enlarged Moon when on the horizon

Humans perceive the sky as a flattened bowl and judge the size of an object by accounting for its perceived distance away from us. Combined, studies have found that the Moon on the horizon is perceived to be larger because the terrain makes it seem like it is farther away, similar to the Ponzo illusion.

Why parts of the Earth are colder when the planet is closer to the Sun

The Earth orbits the Sun in an elliptical shape, and winter in the Northern Hemisphere occurs when the Earth reaches the point in its orbit closest to the Sun, known as perihelion. The lower temperatures result from the hemisphere tilting away from the Sun.

In 1676, Danish astronomer Ole Rømer determined that light did not travel instantaneously by observing a delay in the appearance of solar eclipses on Jupiter when it was farther from Earth.

The best location to view auroras is within the auroral oval

Earth's magnetic field pushes trapped particles from the solar wind toward the planet's magnetic poles, where they can descend and collide with atmospheric gases in a ring located between 60 and 75 degrees of latitude. Auroras can also be viewed at lower latitudes—the sub-auroral oval and solar storm zones—if the sun produces powerful solar storms.

The impacts of the solar maximum on Earth, from telecommunications to auroras

During the peak of the sun's 11-year cycle, plasma emissions stronger than the average stream of particles from the sun can compress and distort the Earth's magnetic field, allowing auroras to be seen farther from the poles. Distortions in the ionized layer of Earth's atmosphere can also alter the path of communication transmissions through the air. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Astronomers can identify systems with pairs of orbiting stars by observing recurring dips in the system's brightness as the stars eclipse one another.

Moon 101: NASA's complete overview of our lunar companion

From modulating our tides to impact our climate, Earth's lone natural satellite plays a key role forming the planet's habitat. Before diving into the rest of the resources on this page, check out NASA's overview of the basics of the Moon—how it got its name, its size and distance from Earth, its structure, and much more.

How scientists study Earth's geocorona, the farthest portion of the planet's exosphere

Seen via ultraviolet radiation scattered by neutral hydrogen in the region, observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory indicate that the geocorona extends roughly 50 times Earth's diameter above its surface. At this distance, the geocorona extends beyond the Moon's orbit.

Aristotle discovered that Earth was spherical by observing the round shadow it cast on the moon during lunar eclipses and by noting that different constellations were visible from different latitudes.

The sun will become a red giant after it exhausts the hydrogen fuel in its core, causing gravity to collapse the core and heat it enough for the surrounding hydrogen shell to ignite, releasing enough energy to cause the star to swell.

By identifying patterns in the periodic movements of the sun, moon, and Earth, ancient civilizations realized that identical eclipses repeat about once every 6,585 days, known as the saros cycle.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor can detect asteroids coming from the sun

Telescopes directed at the sun or lacking heat shields may become damaged, limiting our ability to monitor potentially dangerous objects coming from that direction. The NEO Surveyor is built to overcome this problem and spot asteroids that reflect as little as 5% of incoming light.

The moon is slowly contracting as its interior cools, creating moonquakes and lobate scarps—cliffs that are steep on one side and gently sloping on the other—as the moon's surface buckles.

Watch a simulation of a collapsing star becoming a black hole

When a massive star can no longer release enough energy through fusion in its core to fight off gravitational collapse, the dense core collapses first, producing an event horizon that traps light within it, including some light produced within the star at the time of collapse. As more material falls into the growing event horizon, the star will appear to eclipse itself from the inside.

If the sun disappeared, we would not know about it for 8 minutes and 20 seconds, at which point the Earth would suddenly move in a straight line on its way out of the solar system.

A composite of telescope images of the sun, which each reveal unique solar features

While traditional cameras can reveal sunspots—cooler regions on the sun's surface—in visible light, x-ray detectors can highlight explosions of high-energy plasma and magnetic fields known as coronal mass ejections. Hydrogen-alpha filters can reveal clouds and filaments of material suspended in magnetic fields above the sun's surface.

Atmospheric greenhouse gases trap thermal energy and make Earth habitable

The moon and Earth are at the same distance from the sun, but the moon experiences large fluctuations in surface temperature because it lacks an atmosphere to insulate it. Gases such as water vapor, ozone, carbon dioxide, and methane can intercept about 90% of the infrared radiation emitted by Earth's surface.

Replacing the sun with a black hole would quickly collapse life on Earth

A black hole of the sun's mass would only be six kilometers wide, but it would exert the same gravitational pull as the sun. This means the planets would keep their current orbits but no longer receive solar radiation.

The moon's gravity exerts an overall pressure that displaces the oceans toward the opposite sides of Earth's equator, producing tides.

Scientists validated Albert Einstein's theory of gravity by measuring the apparent positions of stars via their starlight as it traveled near the sun on its way to Earth during a total solar eclipse.

The crew of Artemis II captured a photograph of Earth setting as they orbited the moon

On April 6, 2026, the Artemis II astronauts captured a striking image of Earth setting as their spacecraft orbited the Moon, echoing the iconic Earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8's Bill Anders 58 years earlier.

Coronal mass ejections and solar flares produce the most extensive auroras

The most intense geomagnetic storms are produced when massive clouds of plasma—ionized gas—are expelled from the sun's upper atmosphere and interact with the Earth's magnetic field. These storms expand where auroras are bright enough to be seen to regions farther from the poles, particularly during peak periods of the sun's 11-year intensity cycle.