Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses-1999 to +3000 (2000 BCE to 3000 CE) Introduction. Eclipses of the Sun can only occur when the Moon is near one of its two orbital nodes [] during the New Moon phase (see Periodicity of Solar Eclipses).It is then possible for the Moon’s penumbral, umbral or antumbral shadows to sweep across Earth’s surface thereby producing an eclipse.