Strange Universe

Thanksgiving in outer space

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

But many celestial phenomena do actually merit gratitude and one is coming up next week. So happens, we’re the only planet with a major Moon that does NOT orbit around our equator. The Moon instead circles us in the same flat plane as the plane of the solar system, called the zodiac. That makes the Moon periodically meet bright planets in our sky. We can also be thankful that the only two disks in our sky, the moon and sun, both appear the same size. This is true nowhere else, and it alone creates those amazing solar eclipses.