The following is an expert taken from
An "Interview" with a Solar Eclipse Engineer -
Whoever knew the job could be this complex—and exasperating?
By Tzvi Freeman

I highly recommend the entire article. It's a fictitious discussion of a scientist talking to an angel (or as one of my teachers call them, energies).

Project Solar Eclipse

Objectives:

1. Human beings will gradually learn to predict movement of cosmic bodies and recognize elemental forces of cosmos, including insights into the principles of gravity (through observation of movement of cosmic bodies), the electromagnetic spectrum (through observation of chromosphere during solar eclipse), and nuclear forces (with the aid of that same solar eclipse), with an ever-receding horizon of understanding.

2. Humanity will come to realize that like everything in nature that they take for granted, a solar eclipse is another exemplar of the astonishing miracles of everyday creation.

Requirements:

1. Intelligent life, capable of recognizing cyclical patterns and reducing them to formulas that attain accurate predictions.

2. Habitat capable of sustaining such intelligent life.

3. Atmosphere to protect such life from hazardous cosmic rays, asteroids, etc., while simultaneously allowing such life to observe cosmic bodies and their movements.

4. Habitat must be placed in a geometrically guided system simple enough to deduce from frame of reference of this intelligent life, sufficiently distant from dense galactic center for clear observation, yet close enough to have something to observe.

5. Large, spherical light-emitting body (heretofore known as “sun”) close enough to be observed as well as to provide necessary conditions for said intelligent life, yet far enough so as not to toast it.

6. Smaller body closer to frame of reference of said intelligent life, placed so as to appear just as round as abovementioned sun, large enough to cover the photosphere of the sun, but not so large as to cover the (otherwise imperceptible) chromosphere of the sun.

7. Said smaller body must follow a trajectory that allows for predictable perfect alignment with that sun.

8. Simultaneously, said smaller body will act as a critical element for favorable conditions of said intelligent life.