Why Does This Astronomical Phenomenon Still Cause Excitement Among People Around the World? And How Has Science Dispelled the Most Persistent Eclipse Myths?
“Woe! Woe! The crocodile swallowed the Sun in the sky!” – lines familiar to everyone since childhood. Few know that it was the total solar eclipse on June 29, 1927, that inspired Korney Chukovsky and became the prototype for the villain-crocodile who stole the celestial light. Despite lasting less than a minute, the eclipse could be observed from the far north of Europe to Central Asia.
An eclipse in which the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth is called a solar eclipse. And if the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon, it’s a lunar eclipse. In fact, when there’s a lunar eclipse on Earth, there’s a solar eclipse on the Moon.
What is the magic of eclipses, and what drives us – curiosity, scientific aspirations, or the search for signs from above?
Humans tend to attribute supernatural properties to everything unknown. Celestial bodies, the Sun, the Moon, stars, and their positions have stirred people’s minds for centuries, and sometimes contributed to discoveries. It was during an eclipse that Mikhail Lomonosov discovered the existence of an atmosphere around the planet Venus. And Chinese astronomers as early as the 2nd century BCE were able to calculate how many solar and lunar eclipses occur over two decades.
In an attempt to find patterns associated with eclipses, some ancient peoples believed these phenomena were heavenly punishment. Others considered them the tricks of evil wizards – harbingers of misfortune – and even tried to scare evil spirits away from the celestial body that gives life and harvests.
– Eclipses played an important role in cultures across the world. People feared them because they didn’t understand the true causes. They thought the Sun or Moon had fallen ill and tried to heal them by driving away evil spirits and diseases with loud sounds – beating drums, stomping, shouting, chasing away the celestial Dragon. In Slavic mythology, the dragon’s prototype became Zmiy Gorynych. The sky itself provided characters for the epic, and the dragon was a comet that flew across the sky with a fiery tail.
How Columbus Conquered the Indians
There’s an interesting story associated with the Caribbean Indian tribe. On March 1, 1504, explorer Christopher Columbus met with Indian chiefs and declared that if they disobeyed, he would take the Moon away from the sky. Imagine the horror of the Indians who refused the insolent Spaniard, and that very evening the Moon was shrouded in a red veil. Columbus was probably surprised himself, but he played the role of ruler of the celestial bodies to the end and received an oath of allegiance from the Indians.
– Earth, Sun, and Moon are the main actors in the strange phenomenon called an eclipse. Moreover, the color of the Moon during an eclipse can have many different colors – red, bright red, orange, gray… Sometimes the Earth’s shadow falls in such a way that the Moon becomes so dark, so black, that it seems as if it’s not in the sky at all. And the color itself depends not on the planets and luminaries, but on the characteristics of the place where people observe the phenomenon. In one eclipse, from different points on the planet, the coloration of the Moon will be different, because it depends on the atmosphere of a specific geographical point.
Five consecutive lunar eclipses occurred a century and a half ago, in 1879, and according to scientists’ predictions, will only repeat in 2132.
Eclipses have always frightened people, but could they influence the course of history? It is indeed unusual when the Sun disappears or the Moon takes on a bloody color. But it’s one thing when uneducated tribes believed in magical powers, it’s another when even now ship accidents, disasters, and natural cataclysms are associated with eclipses.
An eclipse occurred two days before the tragic death of one and a half thousand passengers on the Titanic on April 17, 1912. Two days after the full lunar eclipse on April 26, 1986, the terrible accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred. And in August 1997, the day after another eclipse, Princess Diana died in a car accident.
But how many important events occur on ordinary days? People tend to fix in memory cases when two important events happen close together. Eclipses that we can observe from Earth occur only from two to seven times a year. In fact, accidents involving famous people, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, ship accidents, and plane crashes occur in the world hundreds of times more often than eclipses. We remember precisely these tragically vivid events. From this perspective, blaming eclipses for all misfortunes seems undeserved, far-fetched, and generally unscientific.
When There Will Be No More Eclipses
There is a completely scientific hypothesis that in six hundred million years, humanity will no longer be able to contemplate this celestial phenomenon. The Moon will move away from the Earth to a distance at which it will no longer be able to cover the solar disk.
But now we see eclipses because the diameter of the Sun is 400 times larger than the diameter of the Moon, while the distance from Earth to the Sun is also 400 times greater than to the Moon. Given the ratio of sizes and distances, a visual illusion is created that the Moon is the same size as the Sun and can cover it completely.
The Moon’s shadow during a solar eclipse develops a speed of movement over the Earth’s surface of up to two thousand meters per second. Therefore, people in different parts of the planet can see the phenomenon.
In 1999, in honor of the upcoming total solar eclipse, the Romanian government created a unique 2000 lei banknote with a special transparent eclipsed window through which one could observe the celestial phenomenon. And by the way, on the day of the eclipse, not a single large-scale tragedy occurred that was somehow recorded in the annals of history.
Solar eclipses occur only during a new moon, and lunar eclipses only during a full moon.
Interestingly, ancient people tried to find benefits in the eclipse of the Sun: Romans forgave offenses to loved ones, and Rus’ people got rid of cracked dishes.
An Eclipse That Will Only Repeat in a Thousand Years
A total solar eclipse is a rare phenomenon, and many of them we are not destined to see, as they occur in hard-to-reach areas of the planet, at the edge of the Earth – in the polar regions, in Antarctica, or in the very center of the ocean.
But we, the generations living now, are cosmically lucky to witness the longest total eclipse of the 21st century; on July 27, 2018, it lasted 1 hour and 43 minutes. For astronomers, this day went down in history as the Night of Wonders – the date of the eclipse miraculously coincided with the Great Opposition of Mars and the Parade of Planets. According to scientists, a similar eclipse will occur only in 3107 and will last 106 minutes and 13 seconds.
