Eclipse simulator

[Dominic Ford]

Last summer I spent some time playing around building a simulator to show what eclipses/transits will look like, customisable to any observing location on Earth. I was trying to work out which way up an eclipse would appear from my location, and found it surprisingly tricky without looking at a planetarium program.

In case anyone's interested, my simulation of this coming weekend's penumbral lunar eclipse is here: https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20170211_10_100

My simulations of other eclipses are here: https://in-the-sky.org/newsindex.php?feed=eclipses (I've done every eclipse from 1980 to 2050)

I was originally hoping to publish the simulator in time for last year's transit of Mercury, but it turned into a much more massive project than I was expecting... Still, if you want to relive transits of yonder year (or get prepared for 2019), I've also built simulations of various transits of Mercury and Venus here: https://in-the-sky.org/search.php?s=transit&searchtype=News&startday=23&startmonth=1&startyear=2000

Not sure whether charts like this are actually useful, but I've not seen anything similar elsewhere. A good place to find out more about how to observe Saturday morning's penumbral eclipse is the BAA's handy guide here: https://britastro.org/node/9088

[JimT]

Hi Dominic, not sure if you heard of Stellarium, it's a program which is useful for seeing the sky now, tomorrow, last year, in fact anytime you wish and from any place on Earth.  I use it attached to my telescope mount to send the telescope to a given target I pinpoint on the screen.  It is a free downloadable program, you can use it for exactly what you are working on.

Jim 

[Knighty2112]

From SkySafari the last UK eclipse on August 11th 1999 as viewed from Newquay in Cornwall.

 

[furrysocks2]

Hi, Dominic.

An interesting tool. I think the information is very well presented and the charts and path diagrams are excellent features. A great piece of work, well done.

Welcome to SGL, and thanks for posting - I expect there are many here who use your site regularly.

Matt.

[SilverAstro]

1 hour ago, Knighty2112 said:

From SkySafari the last UK eclipse on August 11th 1999 as viewed from Newquay in Cornwall.

As it  might  have been viewed from Cornwall (there were a few exceptions ! Newquay ?!) Sorry, couldnt resist, tell that to SirP

I was few miles NE in Somerset and the birds certainly noticed something was not quite right, to my aged eyes the 90+% was a little dim though not as much as I had expected by advance speculation.

But I got a good show on my 30m 'pinhole' projection camera

 

 

[SilverAstro]

3 hours ago, Dominic Ford said:

Not sure whether charts like this are actually useful, but I've not seen anything similar elsewhere.

A most interesting simulator, thank you.

but I think that your statement in ' this coming weekends event' that  "they {penumbral} are extremely subtle events to observe. " could perhaps warrant more prominance and underlining/emboldening  !

They, penumbral,  ( even totally penumbral, a fine destinction ), are not events for the unwary ! and can lead to disenchantment

[Knighty2112]

7 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

As it  might  have been viewed from Cornwall (there were a few exceptions ! Newquay ?!) Sorry, couldnt resist, tell that to SirP

I was few miles NE in Somerset and the birds certainly noticed something was not quite right, to my aged eyes the 90+% was a little dim though not as much as I had expected by advance speculation.

But I got a good show on my 30m 'pinhole' projection camera

 

 

Yes, sorry. I was there too trying to catch it. Alas SkySafari doesn't simulate cloud cover to make it as it actually happened on the day. I had my scope out trying to view it by projection, and remember getting a brief crack in the clouds after the total eclipse had finished to show the moon rolling away off the sun. Only lasted for about a minute before total cloud cover once again resumed though! ??

[orion25]

Excellent work, Dominic! Welcome to the lounge. Best wishes on your endeavours 

Reggie

[Dominic Ford]

Thanks for the welcome and feedback, everyone. I've been lurking in SGL for a couple of years now, and thought maybe it was time to announce my presence :-)

My website does get a lot of people coming through, but most of them are beginners. Feedback is always very welcome - I even take requests for widgets I ought to build - though it sometimes takes me a long time to get around to making them.... SilverAstro is right - I really ought to flag up more clearly that penumbral eclipses are not events for beginners!

[JimT]

You have a very interesting and informative site Dominic, I apologise, I should have looked at it before going on about Stellarium

Jim

[furrysocks2]

2 minutes ago, Dominic Ford said:

My website does get a lot of people coming through, but most of them are beginners. Feedback is always very welcome - I even take requests for widgets I ought to build - though it sometimes takes me a long time to get around to making them....

I was entranced by the "Universe in 3D" last night, and wish I could lay my hands on my 3D glasses for your planetarium which looks like fun!

For both of these tools, the "double click for more information" tool tips are great - is there perhaps a way for them to open in a new tab, as settings for these two tools appear to be lost when clicking back.

Sorry for going off topic.

[Dominic Ford]

Thanks for the suggestion, furrysocks2. Opening a new tab is a bit hit-and-miss because some browsers don't allow it, but I'll have a try. I think even the browsers that don't allow it will just default back to opening the page in the existing tab.