Name: 【TED-Ed】A rare, spectacular total eclipse of the sun - Andy Cohen
Uploaded: 2015-01-17T14:04:12.000Z
Duration: 3 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

from the west coast to the east coast of the U.S.

surrounded by the fiery ring of the Sun's corona,

during the solar eclipse of the 14th century B.C.E.

the Sun worship of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.

Ancient Chinese astrologers paid with their lives

if they failed to predict the solar eclipse

The earliest date of a specific event in human history,

a battle between the armies of Lydia and Media,

to lay down their arms and declare a truce.

the Moon moves between the Earth and the Sun.

appears to perfectly cover the disc of the Sun

even though the Sun is much larger than the Moon.

The Sun is 400 times bigger than the Moon,

it has to pass between the Earth and the Sun,

the New Moon has a chance to block out the Sun.

and those in the shadows will see a total solar eclipse.

it doesn't block out the Sun's outer atmosphere,

its corona, which appears as a fiery ring

Solar eclipses occur several times a year,

where the Moon doesn't quite line up with the Sun.

And, when the Moon and Sun are perfectly aligned,

the Moon is usually too far from Earth in its orbit

Even on those rare occasions of a total eclipse,

on the 70% of Earth that is covered by water,

The eclipse of 2017 will be remarkable on a larger scale

because the Moon is slowly moving away from Earth.

If a furry ancestor of ours had bothered to look up

during a solar eclipse a hundred million years ago,

it wouldn't have seen the fiery corona of the Sun.

Eventually, the Moon will have moved too far from Earth

It is only during our little wink of Earth's history

that the Moon is at just the right distance

when the Moon exactly lines up with the Sun

and the Moon is close enough to the Earth,

and, if you happen to be in its narrow path,

But, as incredible as this event will be,

total eclipses are one of the most dangerous as well.

specifically designed to observe the Sun,