Encyclopedia
Discovery
- Famous astronomers
- Main dates
- Discoveries in
  the solar system
  - Sun
    - Sunspot
    - Solar eclipses
  - Mercury
    - Advance of the perihelion
  - Venus
    - Phases
    - Rotations
  - Earth
    - Form
    - Motion
  - Moon
    - Craters
    - Surface
  - Mars
  - Jupiter
  - Saturn
    - Rings
    - Satellites
  - Uranus
  - Neptune
  - Pluto
  - Asteroids
  - Comets
Space
- History
- Launching sites
- Space missions
  - Apollo
  - Mariner
  - Viking
  - Voyager
  - Galileo
  - Soho
  - Mars Express
  - Cassini/Huygens
  - Luna
Observatories
- FP7 ESPaCE Institutes
  - IMCCE
  - ROB
  - TUB
  - JIVE
  - CNES
  - DLR
  - TUD
- Other European observatories
  - Observatoire de Paris
  - Pic du Midi
  - OHP
  - Bordeaux
  - OCA
  - Besançon
  - Greenwich
  - Torino
  - Vatican
  - Catania
  - Bucarest
  - Pulkovo
  - SAI
- Institutes outside Europe
  - USNO
  - JPL
  - Mount Palomar
  - Zelenchuk
  - Shanghai
  - Itajuba
  - ESO
- The largest
  telescopes
  - Reflectors
  - Refractors
- Space observatories
  - HST
  - GAIA
  - SOHO
Understanding

Knowing more about solar eclipses

Knowing more on the Sun

Decrease font size

Increase font size

Print this page

Français

Discoveries > Sun V

SOLAR ECLIPSES

Credit : GSFC/NASA

In fact, a solar eclipse is an eclipse of the Earth, since it is the Earth passing through the shadow of the Moon and not the Sun!

The animation at left shows the motion of the shadow of the Moon on the surface of the Earth during a total solar eclipse visible in 1998, particularly in Guadeloupe. Here we see the motion from left to right over Central America. Click here for the conditions of observation of this eclipse.