Shadows in the sky.

In many stories of adventure, the heroes succeeded in obtaining the best of the superstitious tribal people by his superior understanding of eclipses. A classic example is in prisoners of the Sun Herge, journalist boy Tintin terrifies his captors with his apparent power of the sun spot.

One of the first authors to use this convenient device plot was h. Rider Haggard in King Solomon's Mines. But when Haggard released his history, his understanding of Eclipse is, unfortunately, less than ideal. Until the corrected in a later Edition, implied that the Moon is full on the nights before and after the eclipses of the Sun. But they occur when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, while the Moon is full, when it is on the opposite side of the Earth to the Sun. There is always a gap of two weeks between an Eclipse of the Sun and the full moon before or after.

Eclipses of the Moon, however, take place only at full moon (but not to each full moon). They occur when the Moon enters the Earth's shadow.

During an Eclipse of the Sun, the Centre passes of shadow of the moon on a band on Earth from the surface to 272 km (169 miles) wide. In this band that all the rays of the Sun is cut for a few minutes, the sky darken and the stars come out. By pure chance, the Sun and the moon appear to be almost exactly the same size seen from the Earth, so effectively, the Moon covers the Sun during a solar eclipse features of the Sun normally cleared by his own intense light become visible around the dark edge of the moon. Red ridges flamboyant - clouds of hydrogen - and a Pearl White Crown, the atmosphere of the Sun "", can be seen.

Earth's shadow is broad enough to cover the full moon in an Eclipse of the moon. Sometimes the Moon passes through the edge of the shadow, and it just seems to fade a bit. In order that there is a total eclipse of the Moon, he must enter in the central part of the shadow.

But even then the Moon is not completely obscured - a few sun rays bent by Earth's atmosphere, always fall on it. Since only the red end of the spectrum bends light just right to inform the Moon, our satellite of familiar money takes a beautiful deep shade of copper.