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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Eclipse Pair
Explanation: Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon , separated by just over 14 days, create a lunar and a solar eclipse. But only rarely is the alignment at both new moon and full moon phases during a single eclipse season close enough to produce a pair with both total (or a total and an annular) lunar and solar eclipses. More often, partial eclipses are part of any eclipse season. In fact, the last eclipse season of 2024 produced this fortnight-separated eclipse pair: a partial lunar eclipse on 18 September and an annular solar eclipse on 2 October. The time-lapse composite images were captured from Somerset, UK (left) and Rapa Nui planet Earth. The 2025 eclipse seasons will see a total lunar eclipse on 14 March paired with a partial solar eclipse on 29 March, and a total lunar eclipse on 8 September followed by a partial solar eclipse on 21 September.
| Date | January 3, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |