In the middle of the afternoon, day will shift to night, as a total solar eclipse touches 15 states. We know now what causes a total solar eclipse. Here are seven times a total solar eclipse has helped advance human science. Culture Club/Bridgeman via Getty ImagesOn March 14, 189 BCE, a total solar eclipse swept over what is now northern Turkey. Corbis via Getty ImagesGemini 12 astronauts Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to see a total eclipse from space.

---

Persons: —, China's emporer, Edmond Halley, De, Anaxagoras, Hipparchus, Nicaea, Edmond, Halley, Isaac Newton's, Norman Lockyer, Pierre Jules César Janssen, Janssen, Lockyer, James Craig Watson, Vulcan, Albert Einstein, Einstein, Corbis, Jim Lovell, Buzz Aldrin Organizations: Service, Business, Getty, Alexandria . Culture Club, Bridgeman, Science, Society Picture Library, Sun, Mercury, Wallops, Smithsonian Magazine, NASA Locations: Ireland, China, Alexandria, Turkey, Egypt, England, India, French, Guntur, Brazil, Principe, Africa, Virginia, Peru