Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. One of the things that I like to do in each of my introductory astronomy classes is to be in the class with the Astronomy picture of the day. From the NASA website that is APOD.nasa.gov slash APOD. And today's picture for June 15th of 2020, while it is titled a Ring of Fire Sunrise Solary Clips. So what do we see here? Well this is a video clip of a solar eclipse from 2013. And this is an example of what is called sometimes a Ring of Fire Eclipse. And as you can see here in the still image, you can see that there is a Ring of Sunlight. Now the dark part at the center is the moon blocking out the sun or a portion of the sun. But in this case some sunlight is visible around the edge of the moon. And this is an example of what we call an annular eclipse or a Ring Eclipse. And this occurs when the moon is at its furthest from the earth. Because when the moon is a little bit further away, it will appear a little bit smaller in this in this guy and not be quite able to block out the sun. Now of course there is a little more to it than this is it is a video and as we play the video, you'll be able to see a number of different things. You'll be able to see this as the sun is rising, you can see the little bit of the sun peaking through the clouds there is a very distinct ring or arc of material. So we're just seeing a ring of the sunlight around the edge of the moon. And again that occurs because the moon is a little bit too far away to block out the entire sun. The moon has an elliptical orbit and that means sometimes it's closer to the earth and appears larger. Sometimes we call that the super moon and sometimes it's a little bit further away. But you'll see a number of different sections here and you can see the sun as it's rising as it was rising eclipsed and you can see that the moon is not quite able to block out the entire sun. And then as the eclipse ends the sun will turn into a crescent phase as well. So a number of different images that we get to see here as you play through the video and of this annular eclipse that occurred back in 2013. Now annular eclipses are not unusually rare compared to ordinary solar eclipses. It just depends on when the eclipse happens to occur. If it occurs when the moon is furthest away what we call apogee then it is more likely to be an annular eclipse like we see here. If it occurs when the moon is closer and that is called paragy then the moon will be able to completely cover the sun and we will see a total solar eclipse where the complete sun is blocked out. So here we get to see a number of different views of the eclipse as the sun was rising eclipsed from here taken in western Australia. So that was our picture of the day. For June 15th of 2020 it was titled a Ring of Fire Sunrise Solar Eclipse. We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture. Previewed to be still crazy. So we'll see what that is about tomorrow. And until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.