Why do we not see an ecliipse when the plants closest to the sun are in between the earth and sun?

Why do we not see an ecliipse when the plants closest to the sun are in between the earth and sun?





Does it have to do with umbra and preumbra, or the shadows of the planets not reaching the earth? Can you please help me, i get the solar eclipses (total, annular, partial) and lunar eclipse, but im not shure why we DONT see an eclipse whent hte planets closest to the sun are in between sun and earth.

Why do we not see an ecliipse when the plants closest to the sun are in between the earth and sun?
In fact, we do... we can "see" the disk of the planet move across the face of the sun; however, compared to the sun, the planets Mercury and Venus are so much smaller, that the eclipsed sunlight is very small - less than 1% - so unless we look for it with specialized viewers, we don't detect it.





If the moon were as far away from us as Mercury is during a solar eclipse, the apparent size of the moon would have little effect eclipsing the sun.
Reply:Mercury and Venus as so small against the sun's face that they don't cast a shadow far enough to reach the earth.


The moon is very close to the earth and just the right apparent size that it covers the sun and casts a shadow that reaches the earth.


If we were in orbit around Mercury or Venus then those worlds would eclipse the sun for us.


In fact, we do see both planets cross the sun's face (called a transit) but the planet is a small black dot against the huge sun's disk.





Think of a lightbulb 10 feet from you. A quarter held very close to the lightbulb may make a small blockage of the light, but it doesn't block the entire bulb from your view. But put that quarter real close to your face and it blocks the bulb from your view completely.
Reply:because they are way too far from earth, and even the moon makes a small shadow, it doesnt cover all the earth
Reply:Both Mercury and Venus rarely cross the surface of the sun as seen from the earth. When that happens it is called a Transit.





It is not true that the inner (inferior) planets do not cast a shadow on Earth. They do, but it is the penumbral portion of the shadow rather than the umbral portion, so part of the sun is visible around the disk of the planet.





It is the umbral portion (where none of the sun is visible around the disk of the moon) that causes total solar eclipses. The umbral portion of the shadow of Earth causes total (and some partial) eclipses of the moon. Some partial eclipses are known as penumbral eclipses because none of the umbra hits the moon.