Are cell mutations always bad? A mutation is a change in the genetic material of an organism. We are made from trillions of cells, each with a nucleus composed of DNA â a set of instructions that tells the cell what to do. Cells copy themselves with astonishing accuracy, but every now and then a piece of code is copied incorrectly.
Eclipses occur due to the special coincidence of the moon and the Sun being the same angular size. The Sun is 400 times wider than the moon, but it is also 400 times farther away, so they coincidentally appear to be the same size in our sky. This is what allows us the phenomenal beauty of the total solar eclipse.
Lunar Eclipse. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth's shadow falls on the Moon, and a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's shadow falls on the Earth. A look at the geometry of Moon phases would make it appear that a lunar eclipse should happen at every full moon and a solar eclipse at every new moon. This does not occur because the plane of the Moon's orbit is tilted 5.2Â° with respect to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun (the ecliptic plane). The conditions for eclipses occur only at the points at which the Moon's orbit passes through the ecliptic plane.