Eclipse Animation Elements

Due to their relative scale and distances, the disks of the Sun and the Moon appear to be almost the same size in the sky when standing on Earth. This means that even though the Moon is much smaller than the Sun, it can block most or all of the Sun's light, resulting in a dark shadow over Earth called a solar eclipse.

These videos are designed to help describe some of the dynamics that determine how solar eclipses work and why they are important for those of us living on Earth.