Целосно затемнување на Сонцето се гледа од Земјата поради случајните комбинации на околностите. Дури на Земјата, затемнувања од овој тип се познати на луѓето како привремен (на геолошка временска скала) феномен. Стотици милиони години во минатото, Месечината била многу блиску до Земјата за прецизно да го оклузира Сонцето како што прави денес за време на затемнувања; и повеќе од една милијарда години во иднината, ќе биде премногу далеку да го стори тоа.<ref name="fourmilab"/>
Total solar eclipses are seen on Earth because of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. Even on Earth, eclipses of the type familiar to people today are a temporary (on a geological time scale) phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of years in the past, the Moon was too close to the Earth to precisely occlude the Sun as it does during eclipses today; and over a billion years in the future, it will be too far away to do so.<ref name="fourmilab"/>
Due toПоради [[tidal acceleration]], the orbit of the Moon around the Earth becomes about 2.2 cm more distant each year. It is estimated that, in slightly less than 1.4 billion years, the distance from the Earth to the Moon will have increased by 30,400 km. During that period, the apparent angular diameter of the Moon will decrease in size, meaning that it will no longer be able to completely cover the Sun's disk as seen from the Earth. This will be true even when the Moon is at [[perigee]], and the Earth at [[aphelion]]. Moreover, the Sun is increasing in diameter by about 5% per billion years.<ref name=ribas2010>{{Cite book | last=Ribas | first=Ignasi | contribution=The Sun and stars as the primary energy input in planetary atmospheres | title=Solar and Stellar Variability: Impact on Earth and Planets, IAU Symposium | journal=Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union | volume=264 | pages=3–18 |nopp=y |date=February 2010 | doi=10.1017/S1743921309992298 | bibcode=2010IAUS..264....3R |arxiv = 0911.4872 }}</ref> Therefore, the last total solar eclipse on Earth will occur about six hundred million years from now.<ref name="fourmilab">{{cite web|last=Walker|first=John|url=http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/peri_apo/|title=Moon near Perigee, Earth near Aphelion|publisher=Fourmilab|date=July 10, 2004|accessdate=March 7, 2010}}</ref>
