Solar Eclipses By Megan Sawford

Contents Slide 1: Title Page Slide 2: Contents Slide 3 : My Task Slide 4: What is a Solar Eclipse? Slide 5: Facts about Solar Eclipses Slide 6: Baileys Beads Slide 7: Diamond Rings Slide 8: Safety Slide 9: Summary

My Task My task is to make a presentation using power point, about solar eclipses. It is written for Mrs.Coombes, so should be easy for beginner Astronomers to read. She’s off to North Russia to view a solar eclipse on 1st August 2008 (10:21 GMT). The purpose of my information is to tell her what she may see and needs to look for when she is watching. To help me with my research I used the following websites: google.co.uk/ wikipedia.org/ news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/ stm NB: This is not the Mrs.Coombes that this is for, it just comes up when you type “Mrs.Coombes” on Google.

So… What is a Solar Eclipse? A Solar Eclipse is when the moon comes between the Earth and the Sun, blocking all or part of the light. The umbra, penumbra and antumbra are the names for the parts of shadow in an eclipse, depending on how dark the shadowed area is.

Facts about Solar Eclipses The last Solar Eclipse happened in 2003, but was only visible from part of Antarctica. They don’t last for very long, the longest duration of one on record lasted seven and a half minutes. They will continue to occur until about 600 billion years from now, when the Moon will be to far away from Earth to cover the Sun. Many unusual fears surrounded eclipses before scientific knowledge of today was around. This led to people doing really silly things like covering up wells to prevent poison dropping into them from the sky.

Baileys Beads Near the beginning and end of total solar eclipse, the thin slice of the Sun visible appears broken up into beads of light. These lights are called 'Baily's Beads' after the British astronomer Francis Baily who discovered them. They occur because the edge of the Moon is not smooth but jagged with mountain peaks.

Diamond Rings Diamond rings are made of diamond and you can wear them on your finger. But this kind you don’t find in a Solar Eclipse. In this case the diamond ring effect refers to a phase during a solar eclipse when a little bit of sun appears from the edge of the moon, right before and right after totality. These are my favourite effect.

Safety Never look directly at the Sun, you may be blinded for life! Poke a small hole in an index card with a pencil point, face it toward the Sun, and hold a second card three or four feet behind it in its shadow. The hole will project a small image of the Sun's disk onto the lower card. This image will go through all the phases of the eclipse, just as the real Sun does. Experiment with different size holes. A large hole makes the image bright but fuzzy; a small hole makes it dim but sharp. Or just buy a telescope or binoculars, but make sure you get a special filter.

Summary A Solar Eclipse is when the moon comes between the Earth and the Sun, blocking all or part of the light. They are very pretty and can last up to 7 and a half minutes. They cause cool effects like bailey's beads and my favourite, diamond rings.

Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed it.