# At the moment of total solar eclipse what are exact distances of Moon & Sun to the Earth

By total eclipse I mean the Moon and Sun are seen equal in size, neither of them is bigger.

For example, the Moon's average distance is 384000 km and the Sun's average distance is 149.5 million km. But when this distances occurs, are the Moon and Sun seen equal in size? (from Earth of course)

• Did you try some calculations? If you divide the given distances by the known diameters of either object, you can see if you get the exact same value or not – Aganju Mar 26 '16 at 14:51
• Since both the distance to the Moon and to the Sun varies, there are infinitely many solutions to this. – pela Mar 26 '16 at 20:44
• @ott: How so? – pela Mar 27 '16 at 9:11

The moon has an average diameter of 3,474 km, and the sun has an average diameter of 1.392684 million km. So the Sun is 400.9 times larger than the moon. When the sun is 149600000 km distant, then if the moon is $149600000/400.9 = 373200$km, the sun and the moon would appear equal in size.