Solar eclipses and transits

A solar eclipse and a transit are occultations of the Sun: the observer stands in a body's shadow, which is the same as seeing the Sun hidden by that body. The Sun is a disc, so the Moon's shadow can be an umbra, a penumbra or an antumbra, which gives a total, partial or annular eclipse. A transit is the annular case with a planet too small to cover the Sun.

Solar eclipses are the deepest part of this corpus:

• Catalogues and types: enumeration and classification.
• Global circumstances: paths, limits and maps.
• Local circumstances: contact times, magnitude and obscuration at one site.
• Lunar limb profile: the Moon's mountains and valleys, and Baily's beads.
• Solar radius: the values in use and what each costs.
• Validation and error budget: observed against predicted.
• NASA SVS and Ernie Wright: the 2024 reference method.

Transits use the same machinery with a planet in place of the Moon:

• Transits of Mercury and Venus.