Earth

Our beautiful Earth, our fragile spaceship... no more words.

Earth from space


If you want to understand how Earth moves around the Sun, take a look at this link

or take a look at this animation ; it's cool since it also includes the moon. But you must BE AWARE: sizes and distances are not scaled!

Eclipses

Eclipses are among the most impressive astronomical events.
Everybody can enjoy them, be it astronomer or not.

When is the next eclipse going to take place?
Would it be visible from my country?

Eclipses

Moon's phases

A very notorious feature of the moon -as we observe it from Earth- is the fact that what we can see, changes throughout the month.
Sometimes we see half moon, sometimes we see a full moon, etc.
But why do this occur?

According to the position of the Moon on its orbit , relative to the position of the Earth and the Sun, we are able to see only a portion of its illuminated face.

... well, that sounds interesting, but how does this really works??

Take a look at this or this . They are good animations to understand the relation between the position of the Moon on its orbit and the view we have of it on Earth.

But the Moon is not the only one to show faces. Every object located between us (the observers) and the Sun, shows faces. So, Mercury and Venus also show faces.
This link cool link shows you this idea.

With the aid of a telescope, you can follow Venus phases. With unaided eye, you will notice that some days Venus is brighter than others. This is partially due to Venus' phases.