What are eclipse tracks? Best answer gets 10 points.?

Question

What are eclipse tracks? Best answer gets 10 points.?

Answer 1

The track is the area affected by the eclipse.

a.k.a. where it will be dark

Answer 2

The term could apply to any solar eclipse, but I'll use the Earth/Moon for the explanation.

When the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, it can cast a shadow on the Earth. If you were in orbit around the Earth, you could see the Moon's shadow on its surface. As the Moon progresses around the Earth, the shadow moves across the face of the Earth. The Earth's rotation also causes the part that is in the shadow to change.

If you were to take a map of the Earth's surface, and shade in everywhere that will fall under the shadow, you will see the path that the shadow follows across the map. This path is the eclipse track.

In a nutshell, it's a plot of everywhere that will be experiencing the solar eclipse. Eclipse tracks usually have another area surrounding them that might just be an outline, or possibly a less-shaded region. That represents the areas that will receive a partial eclipse, where the darker-shaded regions will be receiving the total/anular eclipse.

Answer 3

Take a complete solar eclipse like the 1999 one in the Northern Hemisphere.The first place on the Earth's surface to see it was Nova Scotia.  Then it crossed the Atlantic, Southern England, Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, Iran and India, and then left the Earth's surface.  The path of totality was about 300 km wide; from anywhere else you'd only have seen a partial eclipse.  Before it appeared in Canada and after it ended in India you'd only have been able to see it from space.  That's an eclipse track.  Get a light bulb, a tennis ball and a globe and you'll see what I mean.