I know it takes like 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth, so does that mean that we experience the eclipse 8 minutes after it happens? I understand that the moon isn’t nearly as far so it’s probably more of just the moon going in front of it, but it confuses me because we still see the ray of sunlight around the moon at totality, so is that light “8 minutes old”?
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The Sun’s light took 8 minutes to reach the Earth-Moon system. Some light hits the surface of the Moon, and that light gets interrupted on its journey. We see this happen about 1.2 seconds later because that’s how long it takes for light from the Moon to reach Earth.
We are witnessing the eclipse 1.2s after it happens.
Something like the transit of Mercury across the sun we witness about 5 minutes after it happens because Mercury is so far from the Earth. (Mercury is about 3 light-minutes from the Sun)
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