Hi,
People all over the world were saying “wow” yesterday.
Because something amazing happened.
A solar eclipse.
… It reminded me of something very interesting.
How the Torah refers to the sun and the moon.
It calls them “the two large luminaries”. (Genesis, 1:16)
That makes it sound like they’re in the “same ballpark”.
But the truth is?
The sun is really 400 times larger than the moon!
Don’t worry.
Because the Torah continues.
The sun is “the large one”. And the moon is” the small one”.
But why would the Torah put it both ways?
… Today we may know the answer.
Because every astronomical body has two measurements.
Its true size. How large it really is.
And its apparent size.
How large it looks to someone on earth.
And both measurements are very precise.
Guess what?
The sun is 400 times larger than the moon.
But the sun also happens to be 400 times farther away from the earth.
The apparent sizes of the sun and the moon are exactly the same!
That’s how they seem to us.
And that’s what makes an eclipse look so amazing.
The disk of the moon covers the disk of the sun exactly!
… An eclipse is an amazing thing to see.
But we shouldn’t forget two things we see every day.
The sun and the moon.
We shouldn’t wait for the next eclipse to say “wow!”
All the best,