25 questions and answers

3) How often does a solar eclipse?

Although solar eclipses seem very rare, because they cannot be seen from the same place on the planet very often, they actually occur quite frequently. Every year there can be between 2 and 5 solar eclipses across the planet. However, not all of them are total eclipses: some are partial or annular, and sometimes the total eclipse can only be seen from a very narrow strip of land.

Two solar eclipses per year are most common. Three or four are less frequent, and five solar eclipses in the same year is very rare, occurring only a few times per century.

However, since the Moon's shadow is very small, the probability of the eclipse passing through the same place is very low. Therefore, at a fixed location on Earth, a total eclipse only repeats itself every 300 to 400 years or less.