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RE: Eclipse: It's Not Just a Twilight Novel
While I do enjoy these astronomical phenomenons, I wanted to ask a couple of questions.
On one hand we are taught that light rays travel perpendicularly towards earth, but when the eclipse model is drawn, they are shown diagonal?
When we move an object closer to the source of the light, the shadow (umbra) grows bigger. Whereas, in the eclipse model, it grows smaller?
I suspect the illustrator was just trying to get out the basic concept of where the shadow would be, and why it's there. I suppose you could make the argument that a sun ray could beam out from the sun's pole and head somewhere other than straight out ... like little flashlights, maybe the ones they advertise on late night TV that can survive anything. But I'm just a humorist--I gave up on my science dreams when I realized how much math would be involved.
Honestly, I threw that in there just for fun, and it never occurred to me that anyone would take it as a serious scientific illustration.