Solar Eclipse Coloring Page: Free Printable PDF Sheet

Solar Eclipses and the Sun's Hidden Ring

When the Moon Blocks the Sun

A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth, blocking some or all of the sun's light from reaching a narrow strip of Earth's surface. It can only happen during a new moon, when the moon sits between Earth and the sun, though it does not happen every single month because the moon's orbit is tilted slightly compared to Earth's path around the sun.

During a total solar eclipse, like the one shown in this scene, day briefly turns into twilight, birds sometimes fall silent, and the temperature can drop several degrees within just a few minutes as the moon's shadow sweeps across the ground.

The Glowing Ring Called the Corona

The glowing ring of light shown around the moon in this scene is the sun's corona, its outer atmosphere, which is normally far too faint to see because the sun's bright surface overwhelms it. Only when the moon blocks the sun's disk completely does the corona become visible, stretching out in wispy, uneven rays that can reach millions of miles into space.

The corona burns at temperatures of over one million degrees Fahrenheit, far hotter than the sun's visible surface, a longstanding mystery scientists call the coronal heating problem since heat normally decreases the farther it travels from a source.

A Cosmic Coincidence of Size and Distance

A total solar eclipse only looks the way it does because of a remarkable coincidence: the sun is about 400 times wider than the moon, but it also sits about 400 times farther away from Earth, so the two objects appear almost exactly the same size in Earth's sky. No other planet and moon combination in the solar system lines up this precisely, making Earth an unusually good place to watch a total eclipse.

That balance is slowly changing, though, since the moon drifts away from Earth by about 1.5 inches every year, meaning total solar eclipses will eventually stop happening entirely in roughly 600 million years.

Watching Safely With Eclipse Glasses

The round eclipse glasses worn by the kids in this scene are essential safety gear, since looking directly at the sun, even during most of an eclipse, can cause serious and permanent eye damage in seconds. Proper eclipse glasses use special solar filters thousands of times darker than ordinary sunglasses, blocking nearly all visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light so only the sun's safe outline is visible.

The only moment it is safe to glance at the sun without glasses is during the brief phase of totality, when the moon fully covers the sun's disk, and even experienced eclipse watchers keep their glasses within reach in case clouds shift or the total phase ends sooner than expected.

The moon's dark shadow during a total eclipse traces a narrow path across Earth called the path of totality, often only about 100 miles wide, so only people standing inside that thin band see the sun fully covered while everyone else nearby sees just a partial eclipse. That narrow path is also why sky watchers sometimes travel great distances chasing a single total eclipse, since the same spot on Earth may not see another one for centuries.