2019 eclipse

[Chaza]

I watched some video of the eclipse,  I noticed  the sky was lit as the eclipse took place. My question is, how can the sky be lit if the  moon is blocking out the sun.  It seems strange to have no sun, but yet have a lit skyline. 

Any explanation  please 

Chaza

[Peter Drew]

I think it's something to do with the Sun being much larger than the Moon. The Moon only appears to be the same size as the Sun's image because it is much closer. The track of totality is not very wide so sunlight spills round the image of the moon away from the track.    😀

[GraemeC]

The moon is only blocking out the sun for those people within a relatively narrow strip taken by the umbral shadow.  For this eclipse the width of totality was around 120 miles.  Further away from this the sun is shining and it is this light you can see.  Looking at low angles through the atmosphere you are easily looking through into areas where the sun is still shining.  You do get a good 360 degree twilight effect which marks the transition from fully illuminated atmosphere to the atmosphere that is under the shadow.  I saw it in Wyoming in 2017 - spectacular.

Edited July 3, 2019 by GraemeC
Typo

[maw lod qan]

When your in the twilight of totality the change is incredible. I'm pretty sure that at noon, it was Venus we could see shining.

[RT65CB-SWL]

This video from YouTube should help to explain the answer as given by @Peter Drew & @GraemeC... 

The dark area, (and gets darker after 3m30s until approximately 4m20s), that appears at the bottom of video is the Moon's shadow.

 

And to give you an idea of the relative size of Earth & Moon. This YouTube video shows it...