towards becoming a full-fledged teacher
Say Cheese !
The good news first: after the Winter Solstice yesterday, the days only get longer here in the Northern Hemisphere. To all of you down in the Southern Hemisphere, enjoy your summer! Yesterday’s post on the solstice explained that because of Earth’s location on the ecliptic, December 22, 2011 was the year’s shortest day. What is the ecliptic? The word itself came in the late 14th century directly and virtually unchanged from the Ancient Greek word ekliptos having the same meaning as the English word eclipse, but came to us via the Middle Latin expression (linea) ecliptica meaning the line of the eclipse. The (linea) ecliptica was simply denoting the line that eclipses fell on. The image should make clear what is happening-from our perspective one can draw a line from earth out to the heavens through the sun and get the line of the ecliptic. When the moon crosses that line, eclipses can occur.
Image (left) of the line of the ecliptic projected onto the constellations courtesy Tau’olunga under CC 3.0 unported license. Image (right) of earth and ecliptic courtesy NASA in the public domain.
