{"id":27019,"date":"2024-10-03T11:08:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T05:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=27019"},"modified":"2026-01-05T17:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T12:10:24","slug":"solar-eclipse-upsc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/solar-eclipse-upsc\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a solar eclipse?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Solar eclipse:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It takes place when the <strong>Moon moves in the middle of the Earth and the Sun<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Moon blocks the light of the Sun<\/strong>, either fully or partially, which casts a huge shadow on some parts of the world.<\/li>\n<li>A solar eclipse is witnessed only <strong>during the new moon<\/strong> \u2014 when the Moon and Sun are aligned on the same side of Earth.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>A new moon occurs about 29.5 days because that is how long it takes the Moon to orbit Earth. It takes place only between two to five times annually.<\/li>\n<li>It is because the <strong>Moon does not orbit Earth in the same plane<\/strong> as the Earth orbits the Sun. In fact, the Moon is tilted by about five degrees with respect to Earth.<\/li>\n<li>As a result, most of the time when the Moon is in between the Sun and Earth, its shadow is either <strong>too high or too low to fall on the Earth.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>There are four different types of solar eclipses,\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Total Solar eclipse<\/strong>: It occurs when the <strong>Moon blocks the Sun entirely<\/strong>, the areas in the centre of the Moon\u2019s shadow at the time witness a total solar eclipse.<\/li>\n<li>The sky darkens and people who are in the path of a total solar eclipse can get a glimpse of the Sun\u2019s corona \u2014 the outer atmosphere \u2014 which is usually not visible due to the bright face of the Sun.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Annular solar eclipse: It occurs <\/strong>when the <strong>Moon passes in front of the Sun<\/strong> but is at or near the farthest point from Earth, an annular solar eclipse occurs.<\/li>\n<li>In this scenario, the Moon covers the Sun in such a way that only the periphery of the Sun remains visible \u2014 <strong>looking like a ring of fire.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Partial solar eclipse: <\/strong>It takes place when the Moon blocks just a part of the Sun, giving it a crescent shape. During both partial and annular eclipses, the regions outside the area covered by the Moon\u2019s umbra \u2014 the middle and the darkest part of the lunar shadow \u2014 will see a partial solar eclipse. Partial solar eclipse is the most common type of solar eclipse.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hybrid solar eclipse<\/strong>: It is the rarest type of solar eclipse and it is witnessed when an <strong>eclipse shifts between annular and total<\/strong> as the shadow of the Moon moves across the globe.<\/li>\n<li>In this case, some parts of the world see a total solar eclipse, while others observe an annular solar eclipse.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What is A lunar eclipse?<\/h3>\n<p>It occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon align so that the Moon passes into Earth&#8217;s shadow. In a total lunar eclipse, the entire Moon falls within the darkest part of Earth\u2019s shadow, called the umbra. When the Moon is within the umbra, it will turn a reddish hue. Lunar eclipses are sometimes called \u201cBlood Moons\u201d because of this phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/annular-solar-eclipse-9596368\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Annular solar eclipse on October 2: What is it?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A solar eclipse takes place when the Moon moves in the middle of the Earth and the Sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","7":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}