What term means the total or partial obscuring of one celestial body by another?

What term means the total or partial obscuring of one celestial body by another?

• A. Eclipse
• B. Occultation
• C. Transit
• D. Conjunction

Answer: (A)

When one celestial body blocks light from another, that event is called an eclipse. An eclipse can be total or partial, depending on how completely the light is blocked. The classic examples are solar eclipses, where the Moon blocks the Sun, and lunar eclipses, where Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon. The wording of the question fits this idea of obscuring by a shadow: the focus is on light being blocked by the aligning body, which is the essence of an eclipse. Occultation is a related idea: it describes one object hiding another as they pass in front of each other from our viewpoint, but it’s a broader term that isn’t necessarily tied to light being blocked by a shadow. A transit refers to a body crossing in front of another’s disk and often involves measuring changes in brightness, but it isn’t defined by obscuration through shadow. Conjunction is simply a configuration where two bodies share the same sky position or longitude with no obscuration involved. So the term that best captures the total or partial obscuring described here is eclipse.

When one celestial body blocks light from another, that event is called an eclipse. An eclipse can be total or partial, depending on how completely the light is blocked. The classic examples are solar eclipses, where the Moon blocks the Sun, and lunar eclipses, where Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon. The wording of the question fits this idea of obscuring by a shadow: the focus is on light being blocked by the aligning body, which is the essence of an eclipse.

Occultation is a related idea: it describes one object hiding another as they pass in front of each other from our viewpoint, but it’s a broader term that isn’t necessarily tied to light being blocked by a shadow. A transit refers to a body crossing in front of another’s disk and often involves measuring changes in brightness, but it isn’t defined by obscuration through shadow. Conjunction is simply a configuration where two bodies share the same sky position or longitude with no obscuration involved.

So the term that best captures the total or partial obscuring described here is eclipse.