It seems so easy to produce a total solar eclipse. The moon just happens to move between the sun and earth, temporarily blocking out our view of the sun .
But actually, if not for a spectacular coincidence, we couldn't possibly have those solar eclipses.
Think of trying to hold up a ping pong ball in front of your eyes to just cover up from your field of vision a basketball that's further away. Everything has to be just so. You have to make sure the ping pong ball and the basketball are in just the right places. Similarly, in the case of solar eclipses, the sizes of the heavenly bodies and their distances from each other also have to be just so.
From NASA:
Eclipses occur due to the special coincidence of the moon and the Sun being the same angular size. The Sun is 400 times wider than the moon, but it is also 400 times farther away, so they coincidentally appear to be the same size in our sky. This is what allows us the phenomenal beauty of the total solar eclipse. (Note: You can give the audience the experience of the change in apparent size of an object close by and the same object farther away. They can use their hands to measure angular size.)
From the American Astronomical Society:
The Sun’s diameter is about 400 times that of the Moon. The Sun is also (on average) about 400 times farther away. As a result, the two bodies appear almost exactly the same angular size in the sky — about ½°, roughly half the width of your pinky finger seen at arm’s length. This truly remarkable coincidence is what gives us total solar eclipses. If the Moon were slightly smaller or orbited a little farther away from Earth, it would never completely cover the solar disk.
From Scientific American
It is an interesting coincidence that the Moon should so nearly perfectly blot out the Sun, since there is really no physical reason why this has be the case. The Moon happens to be about 400 times smaller than the Sun, but the Sun happens to be about 400 times further from the Earth than the Moon is.
From NASA
Now it just so happens that the Moon takes up almost exactly as much of the sky as the Sun does. That is because the Sun is 400 times wider (larger in diameter) than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away than the Moon. Isn't that awesome? What are the odds? Actually, nobody knows.
What this happy coincidence allows is a perfect total eclipse of the Sun.
"Special," "remarkable," "interesting" and even "happy." Not recognizing the Creator, secular science hardly knows what to say about the amazing coincidence that makes total solar eclipses possible to begin with.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."
Psalm 19:1
