The 2023 Solar Eclipse occurred this past weekend, on October 14th. It was partially visible in Roanoke, Virginia. This eclipse was something called an “annual eclipse”, so it was not a total solar eclipse. The next total solar eclipse will be April 8th, 2024. Beyond that there will not be another total solar eclipse able to be seen from the USA until 2044. It was most visible in Mexico and Central America, passing over Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.
To learn more about the how and why of solar eclipses, Ms. Oakes (Earth Science teacher) was interviewed. Solar eclipses occur when the moon is aligned between the Sun and the Earth, the moon then casts a shadow on Earth. There are three main types of eclipses: total, annual, and partial. A total solar eclipse, as you can imagine, is when the moon is entirely blocking the sun and people in the pathway of the moon’s shadow will experience the total solar eclipse. Annual solar eclipses are eclipses that happen once a year and cause a “ring of fire” effect. A partial solar eclipse is when the moon is only partly in front of the sun, providing only some shadow on the earth.
Ms. Fischer (Physics teacher) currently has a minor in astronomy and talks about her interest in this from a very young age. Ms. Fischer says she has been interested in astronomy since elementary school and still is, stating “I would like to pursue a higher degree in it or in Astrophysics if I had the chance to.” She says her interest was originally sparked from a course she took in middle school and “through the courses I had during Middle and High School, my interest grew, and it actually led me to choose to pursue a degree in physics. I took some astronomy classes during my time in college, did research on the star formation rates in interacting dwarf galaxies, and obtained a minor in astronomy.” To this day Ms. Fischer continues to love astronomy and physics, helping her students to also pursue their interests in these topics.