Our Shining Star Lowerlevel_01

The crowd comes into the open area. One man checks his watch. What we are about to see happens often. This does not happen in the same place. Some people come from far away to see today’s special event. There are scientists from around the world. They have brought special tools to study this. So what’s going on?

At 2:35 pm the Moon will start to pass in front of the Sun. It will make a shadow on a small point on Earth. My town is at this point. It will take two hours for the Moon to pass the Sun. The sky will get dark. The day will look like night. When the Moon passes the center of the SFun the sky will brighten.

This special event is called a solar eclipse. This happens between two and five times a year. People know when they are going to happen before it starts. Many people plan to see it. Many took off work. Students see it happen from their classroom windows.

When this happened one hundred years ago it must have been scary. They did not know what was happening. We now know how the objects in the solar system move. The moon moves around Earth. Earth moves around the Sun. Sometimes the moon blocks the Sun’s light.