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While the Christmas Day 2000 partial solar eclipse may change the apparent shape of the Sun, eclipses past have reshaped the world. | SPECIAL REPORT |
| Click here for full coverage of the 2000 Christmas solar eclipse: |
Like back in 585 BC when a Greek named Thales predicted an eclipse. At the time, in what is now Iran, a long war had been raging. At the peak of one of the battles, on May 28, there was a total eclipse of the Sun.
"The soldiers on both sides took this as a sign from God that he was displeased with the war and it was time to end it," says Fred Espenak, an eclipse expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "And they actually ended the war by having a wedding ceremony between the son of the ruler on one side and the daughter of the ruler on the other side."
The eclipse on December 25, 2000 probably won't alter the course of world events, but it does have the power to change one's view of our world's place in the cosmos.
Sense of place in the cosmos
"We have no sense of motion as our planet spins dizzily on its axis or careens in a lazy circle about the Sun," said James C. White II, executive director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. "It is when an eclipse occurs that we are brought backstage, so to speak, and get to see the workings of the celestial play of which our tiny, rocky world is a part."
A solar eclipse, White says, is a telltale sign of Earth's motion in relation to the Sun and Moon.
"Such a sight brings no small amount of reality to us," White said. "We live on a world -- a ball -- that is falling in space around a star, another, bigger ball, and a third, smaller ball is moving between these two."
The event will be visible from Central America to Canada. At the peak of the eclipse -- 12:23 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (17:23 GMT) -- about 72 percent of the Sun will be covered, as seen from extreme northern Canada. Click here to find out when the eclipse occurs where you live.
A partial solar eclipse on July 30, 2000, as the Sun dipped below the horizon behind a wheat field west of Spokane, WA. 2000 by Fred Espenak |
What you can expect to see
"As the Moon...slides past the Sun, you will observe the Moon's silhouette against the Sun's painful brightness," White said. "As the eclipse proceeds, you will see what appear to be larger and larger 'bites' taken from the solar disk, until, if you are living in any part of the northern Midwestern United States, the Northeast or eastern Canada, the Sun will appear at maximum of this partial solar eclipse to be a crescent."
White said that a partial solar eclipse is a chance to study the smooth curvature of the Moon's dark, lifeless disk contrasted with the searing energy of the Sun. And because the Sun is at the peak of it's 11-year cycle of activity, there is more energy than normal.
Sunspots and eruptions of magnetic energy are rampant on the Sun right now because our star is at the peak of an 11-year activity cycle.
"When people look at the Sun with proper eye protection, there is a reasonable chance that they will see sunspots," says University of Chicago astronomer Douglas Duncan. "If you project the Sun's image with binoculars, you will get a good view of any sunspots as well as a fine view of the eclipse."
| SPECIAL REPORT |
| Click here for full coverage of the 2000 Christmas solar eclipse: |
Catch them while you can
One day, total solar eclipses will be a thing of the past.
Researchers say the Moon is moving gradually away from Earth, its orbit growing by about a centimeter each year. In a billion years or so, by some estimates, the Moon will be far enough from Earth that its apparent size will be too small to block the Sun out entirely.
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