Solar Eclipse

I'm pretty sure most of us have seen a solar eclipse atleast once in their lifetime. The science behind solar eclipse isn't that complicated but it's truly amazing. When you look at the sky, sun and moon are almost the same size but in reality sun is 400 times wider than the moon and at the same time 400 times farther from earth. When the moon eclipses the sun it casts 2 different shadows onto earth : umbra (smaller, darker) and penumbra(larger, brighter). Beacause of that there are 4 types of solar eclipses : 

• Total Eclipse - The moon completely covers the sun, can only be seen when standing within the umbral shadow
• Partial Eclipse - The moon passes in front of the sun off center, seen within the penumbral shadow
• Annular Eclipse - Moon appears too small to cover the sun, happens beacuse moon's orbit is eliptical so sometimes it's closer to earth and sometimes it's farther away
• Hybrid Eclipse - beacuse of the earth's curvature depending on the palce you are on you will either see a total eclipse or annular eclipse
  

While a total solar eclipse happens somewhere on earth every year or two, any random place on earth experiences the event only once every 400 years and usually it lasts around 3 minutes so next time it happens make sure you see it ;)

source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrLRbkOwKs

Total Eclipse

Partial Eclipse

                                                                       Annular Eclipse

                                                                           Hybrid Eclipse