Nature notes reprised

There has been a modest investigation since the lunar querying posting of 29th December.

In the first instance, on the internet, which failed to produce the information I wanted. Lots and lots of stuff about eclipses and lots and lots of pictures, but not the stuff I wanted. No cunning visualisations; or at least I could not find one.

In the second instance, turned up the article on eclipses in my ancient Chambers Encyclopedia, from the mid fifties of the last century. In amongst a wealth of historical material about Sumerian and other astronomers, I found what I wanted to know - this in an article written in the Queen's English with support from a couple of simple line diagrams - but with no pictures. Which all goes to show that there is still some life in the old way of doing things, at least for those of us who were alive and taught to read in said mid fifties.

For the record, the moon does not rotate about the earth in quite the same plane as that in which the earth rotates about the sun, and while this is nothing much to do with the fact of our having eclipses, neither lunar nor solar, it is everything to do with their timing.

PS: from all of which I am now quite clear that ellipse and eclipse are quite different words, even if they are separated by just one letter and are both astronomically flavoured, which considerations had conspired to confuse me.