Eclipses and Sky Events

What this quiz asks

• During a solar eclipse, which body passes between the Sun and the Earth?
• The northern lights are the aurora borealis. What are the southern lights called?
• What is the dark central part of the Moon's shadow, inside which a solar eclipse is total, called?
• A total lunar eclipse can be seen from anywhere on Earth where the Moon is above the horizon at the time.
• At an equinox, where on Earth is the Sun directly overhead at midday?
• What do we call an eclipse in which the Moon covers the centre of the Sun but leaves a bright ring around it?
• Is there a solar eclipse every month, at each new Moon?
• Select ALL of these that are true at the June solstice.
• Which gas, glowing about 100 to 200 km up, gives most auroras their usual green colour?
• Auroras usually form a ring around each magnetic pole rather than shining directly above the pole itself.
• Which comet leaves behind the trail of dust that produces the Perseid meteors every August?
• Select ALL of these that are types of solar eclipse.
• Order these by when they fall in the calendar year, starting from January.
• What is the saros, a cycle already known to astronomers in ancient Babylon?
• What are the points of sunlight that shine through valleys on the Moon's edge just before totality called?
• The Leonid meteor shower produces spectacular 'storms' roughly every 33 years. Why?
• In what year did James Cook observe a transit of Venus from Tahiti?
• Transits of Venus come in pairs eight years apart. Which pair took place in the 21st century?
• According to Herodotus, which Greek thinker predicted the solar eclipse that halted a battle between the Lydians and the Medes?
• In May 1919 Arthur Eddington photographed a total solar eclipse to test Einstein's theory of gravity. From which island?