Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, so let's take a minute or two to honor the over eleven million people who died at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. Okay, so today's only major news is about the huge celestial event coming up on Thursday!
If you live in Australia or Southeast Asia, get ready for a stunning, rare, hybrid solar eclipse! A solar eclipse happens when the Earth passes through the moon's shadow blocking out the Sun, but there are different types of solar eclipses. The first thing you need to know is that a shadow has two parts: the umbra and the penumbra. The umbra is the darker, inside part of the shadow, while the penumbra is the lighter area on the outside. When a partial solar eclipse occurs, the Sun is only partially blocked out because we only pass through the moon's penumbra. An annular solar eclipse is when the moon completely blocks out the Sun, but you can still see the Sun's edges because the moon is too far away from Earth to completely block it out. Finally, the big one is a total solar eclipse, where the moon completely blocks out 100% of the Sun and the part of the Earth in the moon's umbra experiences a few minutes of total darkness. However, a hybrid solar eclipse is extremely rare, and it is when you can see different portions of the Sun in different places. For example, in the hybrid eclipse on April 20, 2023, parts of Australia will see a total solar eclipse, but most of Indonesia and New Zealand will see a partial eclipse.
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