The Ring of Fire
Mind Bending | September 3, 2023
By Dr. Teri Gee, Director, Barlow Planetarium
On October 14, 2023, there will be an annular solar eclipse. But what does that mean?
First, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon comes in between the Earth and the Sun. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute! The Sun is absolutely huge and the Moon is tiny! How can the Moon block out the Sun?”
To understand this, try an experiment:
- Look at a large object across the room. It could be a person, a TV, a chair, anything big.
- Then, get a penny. The penny is tiny compared to the object you’re looking at, right? There’s no way that it could block your view! Right? Wrong.
- Close one eye (or cover up one eye if you can’t close only one eye), take that penny and hold it up right in front of your open eye. Can you see that object now? If you still can, how much of it can you see?
That’s how the Moon blocks out the Sun. The Moon is the penny. Your eye is the Earth, and the object you’re looking at is the Sun. The Moon is so much closer to the Earth that it looks like it’s the same size as the Sun. However, things have to be lined up just right for it to work. If you move the penny a little farther away from your eye, you can see more of the object. If the penny is just a little bit above or below your eye, you can see the object. That’s why we don’t have a solar eclipse every month. The Moon is usually not quite lined up with the Sun when it hits the New Moon phase.
Types of Solar Eclipses
There are four kinds of solar eclipses. The most common is the partial eclipse when the Moon only blocks out part of the Sun. The rarest is called a hybrid eclipse. The annular and total eclipses are also rare. We are really lucky because we’ll be getting two solar eclipses in the United States in the next year. The first one is an annular eclipse in October. Then, there will be a total eclipse next year in April. Unfortunately, neither will be total in Wisconsin, but we can still see partial eclipses here.
What makes the annular eclipse different from the total eclipse? Well, it’s all about the Moon again. If the Moon is just a little bit too far away from the Earth, it doesn’t appear to be exactly the same size as the Sun. The Sun looks just a bit bigger and so the Moon can’t ever completely cover the Sun and leaves a ring of fire.
WARNING: Never Look Directly at the Sun
Every eclipse is amazing and a special experience to see. Even partial eclipses are fascinating. However, it’s extremely important to know that looking directly at the Sun is not safe! You should never stare at the Sun with your naked eye. Doing that can damage your eyes, even cause blindness. The absolute only time that it is safe to look at the Sun without protection is during the brief period when the Moon completely covers the Sun in a total solar eclipse. We call that period totality. It never happens during an annular eclipse or a partial eclipse and is only a couple of minutes in a total eclipse. You can safely observe the Sun using eclipse glasses or you can project the shadow onto the ground using a pinhole camera or even just with a colander and a piece of white paper.
So watch for October 14 when we’ll see the Moon partially cover the Sun!
In the Fox Cities, the eclipse will begin at 10:37am. It will reach its maximum of about 40% at 11:55am and the Sun will completely move out from behind the Moon by 1:17pm.
