When we talk about a “solar eclipse”, we mean that the moon moves in front of the sun – a spectacular, quite rare natural spectacle that took place this morning. But March has not only surprised us with this: in addition to the lunar eclipse on March 14, we are also still in Mercury Retrograde until April 7. The stars are really wild this month! No wonder if you’re feeling sleepless nights or particularly deep emotions – the universe is causing some turmoil! If you’re interested in these topics, then read on now, because we’ve got all the information you need about the solar eclipse in March and how it appeared in Bavaria.
More about the solar eclipse in March and how it came about
Strictly speaking, this phenomenon was a partial eclipse, which means that the moon only partially eclipsed the sun. How does this happen, you ask? It happens when the moon moves between the earth and the sun, partially or completely blocking the sunlight. And this can only happen when there is a new moon, as we had today. But not every new moon leads to a solar eclipse. The reason why it happened today is because the moon’s orbit around the earth is slightly tilted compared to the earth’s orbit around the sun.
Different types of solar eclipse
It only happens two to five times a year that the moon reaches its new moon phase at exactly one of the two points where the two orbits cross. While we had a partial solar eclipse today, there are also other types: the total, the annular and the hybrid solar eclipse. So while today we had a bitten cookie or crescent moon, in a total solar eclipse nothing of the sun is visible. In an annular solar eclipse, the moon is directly in front of the sun, but is too far away from the earth to cover it completely – creating a bright ring. A hybrid solar eclipse means that a ring of the sun is visible for a short time at the beginning and end of a total eclipse.
How did the solar eclipse appear in Bavaria?
For the first time in a year and a half, a partial solar eclipse was visible over Bavaria. The moon covered the sun for around an hour and a half – but in many places it remained cloudy, so the phenomenon was not clearly visible. The spectacle began in Munich at 11:28 and ended at 12:55 when the moon uncovered the sun again. In the southwest of Bavaria, the solar eclipse began a few minutes earlier, at 11:23, and lasted until 12:54. If the weather had been clear, the spectacle would have been easier to see, but as the sun was obscured by clouds, it was more difficult.