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Last Post 10/3/2006 1:10 PM by Terry Kucera

eclipse

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10/3/2006 6:53 AM
Leigh R Hi! I've seen jupiters moons in a telescope, when they put their shadow on the planet. would this be solar eclipse if I were there in that shadow to?

Terry Kucera

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10/3/2006 1:10 PM
Hi Leigh, Basically yes, but probably not quite the same as the solar eclipses we see at the Earth. We are really extra lucky here. The apparent size of the moon in the sky is the same as the apparent size of the Sun. This means that when we have an eclipse the moon just about exactly covers the Sun so that we can see its beautiful outer corona. I have not done the math, but it might be that Earth is the only place in the solar system where you can see this particularly spectacular type of eclipse. In order to figure that out for sure we'd have to calculate how much smaller the sun appears at Jupiter, and how big all Jupiter's moons appear from Jupiter. That is not all that hard - it just needs some geometry you will learn in high school if you don't know it already, but there are lots of moons on Jupiter, so I don't have time to do it right now! Terry