Total Solar Eclipse 2017
Monday, 21 Aug 2017
Rough shadow animation

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a VERY rough animation of what is going on during an eclipse.  You're stationed above the earth, watching the moon's shadow overtake the earth from right to left.  Notice that an observer stationed on the spot to the far right only gets totality for a brief time, basically because the shadow is smaller at that point.  For observers farther east along the path, the shadow's bigger cross-section produces more time in the shadow.  This is maximized at a point called "greatest eclipse", which for the 2017 eclipse occurs near ml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hopkinsville KY.

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Please note that this animation is extremely rough, with an extremely exaggerated scale, and does not show the effects of the rotation of the earth, which also serves to give noon-time observers a greater amount of time in the shadow.