Looks like the moon sort of took a little chomp, a little bite out of the sun, doesn't

simply walk into Antarctica, you have to prepare.

It's been such a long time since we've been in the Royal Astronomical Society.

Is there a photo of a double eclipse?

Hello and welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smeatherst, but this month, without my wonderful co-host, Izzy Clark, because she's not feeling very well, but we still will be hearing from her later in the episode. Don't worry. This month it's all about eclipses. What are

they and how have they been studied throughout history? Izzy has been to visit the Royal Astronomical

Society Library to discover what the society has in their archives. Plus, we have an eclipse

audio diary from astronaut Nicole Stott and her husband, Christot, who've just written from Antarctica.

I mean, I don't know about you. I'm a little bit jealous. And obviously with us right now,

we, as always, we have the marvellous Dr. Robert Massey, the deputy director of the Royal

Astronomical Society. Now, Robert, you've literally written the book on the moon. So you are the

perfect person to help everyone get to grips with eclipses. So should we just kick things off?

What actually happens when we have a total solar eclipse? Well, a total solar eclipse is an incredibly

special event. Every single month, the moon moves roughly between the Earth and the

sun. But you have to remember that the universe is in three dimensions, and it's only when the Earth,

moon and sun line up in those three dimensions that you get an eclipse. So the moon blocks out the

light of the sun. And because they're almost exactly the same size, they're

incredibly rare events. So you get that absolute precision. I've been lucky enough to see three in my

life a long time ago. And actually, the last one was back in 2006. And I've been clouded out for a

couple of them as well. And basically, precise alignment, the moon absolutely perfectly blocking out the light of the sun

because it's directly between the earth and the sun nice and what about other types of eclipses

right we often hear about these quite often there was the partial eclipse earlier this year in the

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