                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2025 January 3

                                Eclipse Pair
                     Image Credit & Copyright: Josh Dury

   Explanation: Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an
   eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can
   nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon, separated by
   just over 14 days, create a lunar and a solar eclipse. But only rarely
   is the alignment at both new moon and full moon phases during a single
   eclipse season close enough to produce a pair with both total (or a
   total and an annular) lunar and solar eclipses. More often, partial
   eclipses are part of any eclipse season. In fact, the last eclipse
   season of 2024 produced this fortnight-separated eclipse pair: a
   partial lunar eclipse on 18 September and an annular solar eclipse on 2
   October. The time-lapse composite images were captured from Somerset,
   UK (left) and Rapa Nui planet Earth. The 2025 eclipse seasons will see
   a total lunar eclipse on 14 March paired with a partial solar eclipse
   on 29 March, and a total lunar eclipse on 8 September followed by a
   partial solar eclipse on 21 September.

                      Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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