Putting aside the Wolfram Language related content, this is a really interesting introduction to the mechanics of solar eclipses. The notion of a "synodic" vs "draconic" really clears up a lot of my questions about why there are not eclipses during every new moon.<p>One thing I was wondering from looking at this is whether there is a good map projection that preserves the shape of the "solar disc" (my term) that represents the side of the earth illuminated by the sun, weighted by the solid angle from the view of the sun, so that eclipse paths would look like straight lines of constant width.
Are all names in Mathematica really all together in a single namespace? Seems odd not to have such a specific function like SolarEclipse behind some kind of importable module.<p>And how do I discover what functions I want?
I heard somewhere that the Spanish managed to wow the people they met in the new world with an eclipse.<p>Is this true? What calculations did they do to figure this out with 16th century math?
I wonder if it would be easy to figure out, given a set of coordinates, if there would be a totality in the next 100 years there and when. I cant figure it from the examples but that would be a neat website.