Earth's shadow

Imagine you are playing with your flashlight in your room. You hold it up against the wall and a bright circle of light appears on the wall opposite to you. Now, put your hand between the flashlight and the wall. You will see that the circle of light on the wall gets smaller because some of the light is blocked by your hand. This is what happens with Earth's shadow too.

You know that the Earth rotates around the Sun and also spins on its axis. When the Sun is on one side of the Earth, the other side of the Earth is in darkness because it is away from the sunlight. This darkness causes the Earth's shadow to be projected into space.

Now, let's talk about the shape of the Earth's shadow. If you look at the Earth from space, you will see that it is a round ball. When the Sun is behind the Earth, the shadow of Earth is also round like a ball. But if you look closer, you will notice that the shape of Earth's shadow is not a perfect circle.

The reason for this is that the Earth is not a perfect sphere. It bulges at the equator and flattens at the poles. So, when the sunlight passes through the Earth's atmosphere and gets refracted, it gets bent at an angle. This bent light causes the shape of the Earth's shadow to appear as a skewed circle, with a slightly flattened top and bottom.

Lastly, the Earth's shadow causes two phenomena that you might have heard of - lunar eclipse and solar eclipse. When the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow, it causes a lunar eclipse. And when the Moon comes in between the Sun and the Earth, its shadow falls on the Earth, which causes a solar eclipse. These phenomena are rare and happen only a few times in a year.

So, this is the Earth's shadow - the darkness that the Earth creates when it blocks the Sun's light and a shape that is slightly different from a perfect circle.