Why can you only see solar eclipses at certain places on earth?

Answer 1

When the moon gets between the sun and the earth the Moon which is 1/400 the diameter of the Sun and also 1/400 the distance to the sun blocks sunlight. The size of the moon just happens to be the right size to cast a shadow onto the surface of the Earth. Actually the small differences in the distance from the surface of the earth to the moon make it so that sometimes when the moon is exactly in line with the Sun observers on the Earth can see a ring of sun all around the moon (anannular eclipse) and sometimes the moon is close enough for the shadow to totally block the Sun but just for a small area on Earth at absolute most a few hundred kilometers wide.

Answer 2

By coincidence, the angle subtended at the earth's surface by its moon is only a very small fraction bigger than that subtended by the main body of the sun. So travelling away, on the earth's surface, from the point of intersection at the earth's surface of the line from the centre of the Sun through the centre of the moon, light from the corresponding edge of the sun soon becomes visible as the sun is occluded by the moon at only a small part of the earth's surface where the cone of darkness intersects the surface of the earth.

Answer 3

A solar eclipse occurs when the shadow of the Moon hits the Earth.

Think of the geometry. The Sun is enormous, about a million miles in diameter. The Moon is much smaller, only about 3000 miles in diameter. So the Moon's shadow is cone-shaped, and only the point of the cone hits the Earth, causing an eclipse.

Answer 4

because it doesnt need to be seen all the time

Answer 5

Because the earth faces the moon from different parts of the world, and when the moon blocks the suns path that's when you get the solar eclipse

Answer 6

Because the moons shadow only falls on a small part of the Earth.