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An eclipse season is one of only two periods during each year when eclipses can occur due to the Moon crossing the ecliptic shortly before or after new or full moon. Each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months later, thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. During the eclipse season, the Moon is at a low ecliptic latitude , hence the Sun, Moon, and Earth become aligned straight enough for an eclipse to occur.

Eclipse seasons should occur 38 times within a saros period.

The type of each solar eclipse depends on the apparent sizes of the Sun and Moon, which are functions of the distances of Earth from the Sun and of the Moon from Earth, respectively, as seen from Earth's surface. These distances vary because both the Earth and the Moon have elliptic orbits.

If the Earth had a perfectly circular orbit centered around the Sun, and the Moon's orbit was also perfectly circular and centered around the Earth, and both orbits were coplanar with each other, then two eclipses would happen every lunar month. A lunar eclipse would occur at every full moon, a solar eclipse every new moon, and all solar eclipses would be the same type.

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