Eclipses

One consequence of the Moon's orbit about the Earth is that the Moon can shadow the Sun's light as viewed from the Earth, or the Moon can pass through the shadow cast by the Earth. The former is called a solar eclipse and the later is called a lunar eclipse. The small tilt of the Moon's orbit with respect to the plane of the ecliptic and the small eccentricity of the lunar orbit make such eclipses much less common than they would be otherwise, but partial or total eclipses are actually rather frequent.