Eclipse glasses protect the eyes from overexposure to the sun's ultraviolet, blue, and infrared light, as a person's instinct to look away from the sun is diminished when it's partly blocked.

Just as directly observing a solar eclipse without protective glasses can cause permanent eye damage, photographing an eclipse requires a specialized filter to prevent damaging your camera.

Because the half of Earth that faces the sun is larger than the area of the shadow cast by the moon during a solar eclipse, observers may experience a total, annular, or partial eclipse.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Solar eclipses are a cosmic coincidence because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but about 400 times closer to Earth, allowing it to block sunlight for those on Earth within its shadow.

The first scientifically useful photograph of a total solar eclipse was taken in Königsberg, Prussia, on July 28, 1851, using a silver-coated copper plate with a light-sensitive chemical layer.

In 2025, the European Space Agency created the first artificial solar eclipse in space when one spacecraft cast a shadow onto another spacecraft to enable observations of the sun's outermost atmosphere.

Because the retina lacks pain receptors, during a solar eclipse, those watching without protective eyewear may suffer from permanent damage without realizing it.

Some maps may incorrectly identify the boundaries of a solar eclipse's totality because they assume the Earth is a smooth surface.

View photographs of solar eclipses on Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn caused by the moons of these planets blocking sunlight.

Learn about the sun's corona, which is nonlethal despite a temperature of millions of degrees

The outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere is best seen during a solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the much brighter (and significantly cooler) solar surface. Despite the high-energy particles in the corona moving fast enough to escape the sun's gravity and gradually become solar wind, their density is too low to contribute meaningfully to the region's overall radiation.

Over thousands of years, the frequency of solar eclipses is greatest around the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and lowest near the equator.

While the sun, moon, and stars rise and set from east to west due to Earth's rotation, the moon's eastward revolution around the Earth causes its shadow to move from west to east during a solar eclipse.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor can detect asteroids coming from the sun

Telescopes directed at the sun or lacking heat shields may become damaged, limiting our ability to monitor potentially dangerous objects coming from that direction. The NEO Surveyor is built to overcome this problem and spot asteroids that reflect as little as 5% of incoming light.

Every eclipse is preceded or followed by another eclipse, separated by about two weeks and alternating between solar and lunar types.

View historical records of solar observations and discoveries, from telescopes in the early 1600s revealing sunspots to NASA's Parker Solar Probe photographing the sun from within its outer corona in 2025.

A composite of telescope images of the sun, which each reveal unique solar features

While traditional cameras can reveal sunspots—cooler regions on the sun's surface—in visible light, x-ray detectors can highlight explosions of high-energy plasma and magnetic fields known as coronal mass ejections. Hydrogen-alpha filters can reveal clouds and filaments of material suspended in magnetic fields above the sun's surface.

Global eclipse tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry, with the 2024 total solar eclipse across North America estimated to have generated $6B in economic activity across regions along its path.

Research shows that during total solar eclipses, some animals change their behavior to match their nighttime activities.

Although the moon passes between the sun and Earth each month, its orbit is tilted by five degrees, preventing Earth from experiencing a solar eclipse each month.

While solar eclipses were considered ominous throughout history, multiple cultures explained the celestial event as the result of mythical creatures nearly consuming the sun.

View a colorful gallery of solar features, including coronal loops and filamentary prominences, curated by the National Solar Observatory.

A real-time 3D-explorer of the solar system

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System allows you to track all kinds of objects in space in real time, from observatories like the James Webb Telescope to all manner of comets and asteroids. Zoom in and out, read up on space missions, and see the solar system from a totally new angle with this incredible interactive site. Jump in here.

Just before and just after a total solar eclipse, sunlight can pass through uneven terrain on the lunar surface, producing disconnected bits of light around the moon called Baily's beads.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the first person to successfully predict a solar eclipse was the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus in 585 BCE, with the resulting celestial event ending a half-decade-long war.

Building the solar system to scale in the Nevada desert

On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our planet's humble position in space.

Electric grids that rely on solar power must compensate for reduced electricity generation during solar eclipses.

The best location to view auroras is within the auroral oval

Earth's magnetic field pushes trapped particles from the solar wind toward the planet's magnetic poles, where they can descend and collide with atmospheric gases in a ring located between 60 and 75 degrees of latitude. Auroras can also be viewed at lower latitudes—the sub-auroral oval and solar storm zones—if the sun produces powerful solar storms.

The majority of exoplanets—planets outside the solar system—have been discovered through mini-eclipses created when they pass in front of their host star and block some of its light from reaching Earth.

By identifying patterns in the periodic movements of the sun, moon, and Earth, ancient civilizations realized that identical eclipses repeat about once every 6,585 days, known as the saros cycle.

Explore an interactive visualization of the solar system

This tool allows you to view the orbits of planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and other significant objects in the solar system. Clicking on an object reveals key facts and historical data.

Earth’s tilt and orbit cause the sun to create a figure-eight pattern

The shape—called an analemma—can be obtained by photographing the sun from the same location and time daily for a year. The Earth's eccentricity created the analemma's width, and its tilt shifts the sun's height in the sky over the seasons.

Solar eclipses block the sun enough to enable scientists to observe its faint outer atmosphere, or corona, whose spectrum led to the discovery of helium over a decade before it was identified on Earth.

Blood moons only occur during total lunar eclipses, when the Earth blocks the sun, but its atmosphere lets redder parts of sunlight through to reflect off the lunar surface.

View media of the sun's south pole, taken for the first time in 2025

Captured in March 2025 by the Solar Orbiter—a satellite developed by ESA and NASA—the images and video are the first to be taken by an object not moving around the sun's equator. The orbiter moved outside the plane of the planets by using Venus to slingshot it into a tilted orbit, and the data it collected will help scientists better understand the sun's magnetic activity.

See a lunar eclipse share the night sky with the Milky Way

Photos taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in March 2025 captured a blood moon and the Milky Way galaxy within the same field of view. The moon appears red from the bluer parts of its reflected sunlight being scattered by Earth's atmosphere.

How solar systems form

Learn how our sun, the planets, and other solar system bodies came to be with these videos and an infographic from NASA. Use this resource to visualize how the solar system formed and to model and describe the process.