solar eclipse shadows, when the moon blocks sunlight to the earth, on the other hand, would not be as spectacular for observers on the moon viewing the earth: the moon's umbra nearly tapers out at the earth's surface. a blurry dark patch would be barely visible. the effect would be comparable to the shadow of a golf ball cast by sunlight on an object away. observers on the moon with telescopes might be able to discern the umbral shadow as a black spot at the center of a less dark region (penumbra) traveling across the full earth's disk. it would look essentially the same as it does to the deep space climate observatory, which orbits earth at the l1 lagrangian point in the sun-earth system, from earth.