Different Flavor of Eclipse

November 6, 2013

Photographed by the Expedition 31 crew aboard the International Space Station and easily spotted at top center in this image is the gray shadow of the moon, cast on bright clouds of the northern Pacific Ocean, as the May 20 solar eclipse point tracked towards the Aleutian Islands and then on to northern California.
© Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth."

One of the most ubiquitous phenomena in the Universe is light being blocked. We see this on Earth all of the time in everyday situations in the form of the common shadow.

When planets and moons get involved, things can get more interesting. Take the case of this past weekend. Many parts of our planet experienced what is called a “hybrid eclipse.” There are lots of good explanations of exactly what this means at places like the Christian Science Monitor and Universe Today.

So if you were lucky enough to experience any stage of this past weekend’s hybrid eclipse, we hope you enjoyed it. The next solar eclipse won’t happen until April 2014 and will only be visible from Australia and some locations in Indonesia.