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On March 29, 2006, a total solar eclipse occured when the new moon moved directly between the sun and the earth. The moon’s shadow fell on the eastern tip of Brazil, sped eastward across the Atlantic, through northern Africa, across the Mediterranean, and into Turkey, where an Exploratorium team was waiting.
One consequence of the Moon's orbit about the Earth is that the Moon can shadow the Sun's light as viewed from the Earth, or the Moon can pass through the shadow cast by the Earth. The former is called a solar eclipse and the later is called a lunar eclipse. The small tilt of the Moon's orbit with respect to the plane of the ecliptic and the small eccentricity of the lunar orbit make such eclipses much less common than they would be otherwise, but partial or total eclipses are actually rather frequent.
Frequency of Eclipses
For example there will be 18 solar eclipses from 1996-2020 for which the eclipse will be total on some part of the Earth's surface. The common perception that eclipses are infrequent is because the observation of a total eclipse from a given point on the surface of the Earth is not a common occurrence. For example, it will be two decades before the next total solar eclipse visible in North America occurs.
