Solar eclipses, on the other hand, are very different because the shadow of the Moon that is projected onto the earth is very narrow. Even when the solar eclipse is total, like next April 8, the totality of the eclipse can only be seen in a rather narrow corridor, essentially a couple of hundred kilometers, or even less, on average. The one on October 8th is a particularly long eclipse because the geometry of the system is favourable
Eclipses of both the Sun and the Moon are not at all, as is often said, a very rare phenomenon, they occur every year and in fact we just saw one of the Moon a few days ago, there will be another one in September, while a the other of the Sun, but annular, i.e. the lunar disk will not perfectly cover the Sun but will leave a shining ring, will be in early October, but this too will not be visible in Italy.
Overall, therefore, we will have 4 this year, but there could be, in other years, even more. So it is certainly not a rare or exceptional phenomenon, as is often found in the media: this time too, it is said that the next total eclipse in this case will be in 2047.
This is true and false at the same time, given that there will be an absolutely similar phenomenon on that date, but, as we have seen, in other parts of the world there will be several every year. The next total solar eclipse will be in 2026 and will be visible in Greenland, Iceland and Northern Spain.
Furthermore, humanity has been able to predict eclipses since the time of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, therefore thousands of years ago, and it was apparently the latter who discovered how the cycle of eclipses recurs the same every 18 years or so, and they called that cycle Saros . It is essentially a completely predictable geometric phenomenon. the Earth revolves around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth and, by chance, the Sun and Moon have equal apparent diameters, that is, in the sky they have equal disks and therefore they hide, sometimes completely, sometimes not.