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Solar eclipse on March 20
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After a longer break, we can see a solar eclipse again from Hungary on 20th March, in the morning. The eclipse will be close to 60% so it is definitely interesting to observe and organize demonstrations to the public, website of the Hungarian Astronomer Association (MCSE), mcse.hu says.
Solar eclipse is created when our Moon is between the Earth and the Sun, and the Moon’s shadow is cast on our planet. The phenomenon can be observed only in the area of the shadow, if you are standing on earth. The size of the Moon and the Sun in the sky is nearly the same, since the Moon is 400 times smaller and is 400 times closer than the Sun, so in a favorable situation, the Moon can cover the whole sun disk.
Partial solar eclipse is visible when the Moon covers only a part of the disk. The latter can be observed during a solar eclipse from thousands of kilometers wide area of Earth. This is shown by the larger and lighter gray circle on Earth’s surface in the figure. During a total solar eclipse, Moon covers the entire solar disk. This is visible from a much smaller area than the partial eclipse; this is the smaller, darker spot in the center of the lighter grey disk in the picture. The latter is only 100-200 km in diameter, it is the totality band. Theoretically, possible maximum period of the total solar eclipse is 7.5 minutes, but so long, however, is extremely rare, mcse.hu says.
