April 8, 2024 - Composite showing the complete sequence of the eclipse of the Sun, from first contact (at upper left) to last contact (at lower right), with totality at mid-eclipse in the middle. Time runs from left to right here, with the positioning of the Suns similar to its actual motion in the sky during the mid-afternoon eclipse. At left are the partial phases before totality, from the start of the eclipse with the Moon taking the first bite out of the Sun at First Contact, C1, at top, to the thin crescent Sun just before Second Contact, C2 before totality. At right are the partial phases post-totality from the thin crescent just after Third Contact, C3, to the end of the eclipse at Fourth Contact, C4, at bottom. The sequence shows the progression of the Moon across the solar disk, moving from right to left (west to east) across the Sun due to the Moon's orbital motion around Earth. So the Moon first contacted the Sun at the 4 o'clock position on the solar disk, and departed it at the 10 o'clock position in these images which have celestial north roughly at top.
