The Importance of Mega Meters in Solar Physics

The distance to the sun is just a crazy bit. Whereas the moon, the closest we get, 360,000 kilometers and the greatest distance away, 405,000 kilometers. That's like 40,000 kilometers variation, depending on where the moon is in its orbit. Sometimes the moon is bigger than the sun from our point of view. And so you get what are called annular eclipses. The downside to an annular eclipse is you can never look at the sun during the entire eclipse. Even if the sun is predominantly or almost completely covered by the moon, it's still too bright to look at.