THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
University of Southern Maine
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Portland, Maine 04103
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THE WANDERING ASTRONOMER
Thursday, February 1, 2024
April Eclipse II: Just a Simple Syzygy
[67 DAYS UNTIL THE APRIL 8TH ECLIPSE]
Drop everything!
Your milk-coated spoons, persistent bad habits, the hitherto unexpressed unsubtle hints, the other shoes, and anything and everything that's unattached or at least loosely bound. A total solar eclipse is happening right now, at this very moment. And, you're missing it. If you're preparing to bolt madly for the nearest window, don't bother. You and I are missing this eclipse because it's happening far away from not only us, but from every Earthling. To observe the total solar eclipse happening now, one would only have to be positioned toward the tail end of the moon's tapering shadow. In other words, you'd have to be teleported to that very point in space.
Solar eclipses are not rare at all. In fact, they're happening constantly. At some point, perhaps, Musk and his coterie of solar system-subduers will provide eclipse tours to the obscenely affluent so that they may behold this unearthly spectacle whenever they wish. We, alas, have to wait. We have to wait until April 8th, when the moon's shadow sweeps tenderly along the terrestrial cheek and steeps us in an untimely afternoon darkness.
It's called syzygy (pronounced si-zuh-jee), defined as the nearly straight line alignment of three celestial bodies. Astronomers define three main syzygy types: occultations, transits and eclipses. An occultation refers to the direct passage of a larger body in front of a smaller one. For instance, on June 1, 2024, the moon will appear to occult the more distant Neptune when seen by observers in Madagascar. While the moon is indeed much smaller than Neptune, from our perspective it appears larger by virtue of its much closer proximity. A transit occurs when a small body passes in front of a larger body so that the former does not entirely cover the latter. The next transit of Mercury, the passage of Mercury across the solar disc, will happen on November 13, 2032. We'll have to wait until December 11, 2117 to observe the next transit of Venus. An eclipse occurs when the body wholly or partially disappears from view due to the presence of another. We acknowledge two main eclipse types: a solar eclipse, which occurs when the moon passes in front of the Sun; and a lunar eclipse, which occurs when the moon moves into Earth's shadow.
On April 8th, we'll experience the type of syzygy in which the moon, Earth and Sun are so aligned so that the moon's nearly quarter million mile long shadow cone will touch our planet. Observers within this cone will watch the moon slowly move across the solar disc until the latter is entirely blocked by the former. Throughout the next two months as we explore the various aspects of this solar eclipse, we should remember that this most magnificent of all celestial phenomena is, at base, just a simple syzygy.
April Eclipse 3: Eclipse types