The Solar and Lunar Eclipse model simulates the occurrences of solar and lunar eclipses. Moon's orbital inclination of 5.145 degrees with respect to the ecliptic (the Earth-Sun orbital plane) is what is responsible for solar and lunar eclipses not occurring every month. In addition, the orbital plane of Moon precesses every 8.85 years, the so-called precession of the apsides. The inclination and the motion of Moon and Earth are depicted (the size of Sun, Earth, and Moon and the size of Moon's orbit are not shown to scale). The illuminated sides of Earth and Moon and the regions of possible eclipses (in yellow and green) are also depicted. In the Ecliptic View, the motion of Sun and Moon across the sky (+/- 7 degrees from the ecliptic) are shown. Moon's phase is shown and solar and lunar eclipses can occur on the ecliptic when Earth, Sun, and Moon line up properly.  

The Solar and Lunar Eclipse model is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the ejs_astronomy_SolarLunarEclipse.jar file will run the program if Java is installed.  You can modify this simulation if you have EJS installed by right-clicking within the plot and selecting "Open EJS Model" from the pop-up menu item.

Please note that this resource requires at least version 1.5 of Java (JRE).