So I have lot's more excitingly difficult questions here:
a) Why doesn't it block other objects such as Venus which is clearly visible in the daytime sky either just around dawn or just around dusk? If Venus were mysteriously to vanish from the sky - I'm pretty sure someone would have mentioned it!
Venus is not seen when it is close to the sun, it disappears into the brightness of the sky just like the moon does and anything else.
We can see Venus transiting the sun - a simple, improvised pinhole camera allows you to see Venus as a black dot in front of the sun.
b) Why doesn't it block out stars during a midday-ish total solar eclipse when it would DEFINITELY be above the horizon and the sky is dark enough to see stars? There ought to be a huge circle of blotted out stars...and there aren't.
Who says that all stars are visible during a Solar Eclipse?
What makes you think that this Shadow Object would need to be a "huge"?
Google the phrase: "stars visible during 2017 eclipse" - and you'll see approximately half a million hits - mostly from the estimated 5 million people who saw it -
and some large number of people who are eclipse experts explaining what would be seen during the eclipse. Yeah - stars and planets are quite visible during the minutes of totality of a total eclipse. In fact, the famous first ever confirmation of Einsteins' theory of relativity came from measuring the position of a star during a total eclipse.
If stars were "missing" that would be expected to be visible - you could be REALLY sure that an astronomer or someone else who was familiar with the skies would have mentioned it during one of the 635 total eclipses that have happened over the past thousand years. If that had happened then the existence of the shadow object would be an accepted part of mainstream science...but it's not. There appears to be no record of anyone seeing this immense, mysterious dark circle hiding the stars.
Why does the shadow object need to be huge. Well, as anyone who has seen a lunar eclipse will tell you, you see the edge of an obviously large shadow being cast over the moon. You can see from the evident curvature of the shadow that it's MUCH bigger than the moon. Now, if (as you claim) the shadow object is close to the sun then it has to be larger than the sun in order to cast a fairly hard-edged "umbral" shadow that's larger than the moon. If the shadow object was smaller, it would need to be much closer to the moon than it is to the sun (as indeed it is in RET). A small shadow caster, close to the sun would produce a VERY soft penumbral shadow...and that's not what we see.
I'll try to get around to drawing you a diagram...but it's late and tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
c) Why does it never block out the sun itself if it's orbiting around the sun?
We never see the sun from its side, for the same reason we never see the moon from its side.
I don't see the relevance of that remark.
d) If it's close to the sun and casts a HUGE shadow over the moon during a lunar eclipse (the shadow is MUCH larger than the moon), then this object has to be much MUCH bigger than the sun. Not 30 miles across - but (rough estimate) between 300 and 500 miles across. We'd be able to see something that gigantic blotting out stars LONG after sunset and LONG before dawn.
Does a giant hand puppet shadow projected onto a wall mean that a giant hand must be creating that shadow?
No - but the hand has to be bigger than the light source or else the shadow will be very soft-edged...blurry. The shadow of the
Earth...er "shadow object" is quite sharp - so either the object is close to the moon - or close to the light source AND larger than it.
e) During a lunar eclipse - the shadow cast by this object doesn't completely cover the moon - it's MUCH bigger than that - so the light blocked by the shadow object would also prevent sunlight from reaching naked-eye-visible outer-planets - Mars, Jupiter and Saturn...anything that's lit by the sun that happened to be close enough to the moon during a partial lunar ecllipse.
You are assuming that the sun, moon, shadow objects and planets are all on the same plane.
Well, the sun, moon and shadow object have to be in an almost exact straight line in order for a lunar eclipse to happen - and if that is the case then any single planet forms a plane with those three objects lying on one edge and the planet defining the orientation of the plane. So, yeah - they're all in the same plane - by definition. Again, I don't see the relevance of that comment.
And while you're pondering those:
f) Why does the moon turn that gorgeous shade of orange/red as it approaches totality in a lunar eclipse?