Solar Eclips 11-AUG-1999 not total

[avhpilot 155]

I was amazed to find out that the eclips is actually modelled but a bit dissapointed that it's only partial. I am sat here in Rouen France (LFOP) which was in the zone of totality. Tried the same at other locations but the result is the same. 

It makes me wonder, if it can do this already (have we seen this before in other sims? i don't think so) then why wont the sim allow for introducing Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn to the nights skies as well? The sky at night is at the moment too bright, that is to say, one can even see the milky way when sat in KJFK at the gate, which is not realistic of course. but that is another matter.

Edited September 15, 2020 by avhpilot

[Farlis 2,280]

Did you check the time? According to my data the totality was over in Rouen at 11:11 UTC. It was sometime around 10:30 UTC

 

I checked it myself for the Stuttgart area, where the totality was reached at 10:32 UTC and you are right. It is not total.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Farlis

[Christopher Low 5,341]

I was in the Moon's umbral shadow for 1m11s on that day, standing on the balcony of my hotel room just north of Plymouth, England (in the foothills of Dartmoor). If the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is not able to recreate totality to the second from that location, then my pennies get spent elsewhere

[dobee51 346]

Maybe it's a day or two off; I would keep checking it every day.

 

[pstrub 998]

That's a pretty cool observation! I didn't even expect it to come this close - has anyone tried it with a different solar eclipse? 

Anyway, even though I have a background in astronomy, I wouldn't give it high priority, although it would be nice to recreate one of the eclipse flights with airliners following the moon's shadow as it flies over the Earth's surface.

And keep in mind that the most commonly used algorithms to calculate ephemerides (i.e. positions of the Sun, planets, and moons) are very accurate for a certain period of time, but outside that time interval they degrade quickly in accuracy. But showing the moon's position to better than 0.25 degrees 21 years ago looks good to me - at least in a software that isn't specifically focussed on astronomy.

In an astronomy software I'd expect a positional accuracy better than 1 arc second though.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by pstrub

[bobcat999 8,444]

I wonder, if you try to fly in the direction of the moons disk relative to the sun, does the eclipse become total at some point?  (Known as the full Jaffa Cake where I come from! 😁).

And before some smart 'word not allowed' injects, I don't mean towards the moon itself 😛.  I mean fly towards a place where it should be total judging by the relative positions of the sun and moon as seen in the sky.

[EmaRacing 302]

Not buying if I can't shoot a Soyuz straight into Mars

[EmaRacing 302]

Also not buying if I can't roll back the time to see the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs

[Shack95 2,658]

6 hours ago, Farlis said:

I checked it myself for the Stuttgart area, where the totality was reached at 10:32 UTC and you are right. It is not total

I tried it as well and couldn‘t get it to total. I remember, back then we went to Stuttgart with school to see the eclipse and it was completely overcast. We could only follow it on screens. When it got completely dark, a slightly weird couple behind us were making a fuss because they thought the world would end or aliens would appear or something like that. Anyway, even though it was quite spectacular to be in more or less total darkness during the day it was still a bit of a disappointment that we couldn’t see the eclipse itself. But of course it was still way better than a regular day at school. 

[andysim212 16]

total or not thats some pretty freeking incredible stuff lol 🙂

[Mace 1,902]

3 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I was in the Moon's umbral shadow for 1m11s on that day, standing on the balcony of my hotel room just north of Plymouth, England (in the foothills of Dartmoor). If the new Microsoft Flight Simulator is not able to recreate totality to the second from that location, then my pennies get spent elsewhere

haha.  "To the second!"   I was in a total eclipse as well, about 4-5 years ago.  It was very strange, it getting dark and streetlights coming on at midday.

[MarcG 2,929]

Yep it's not working correctly, currently at the first one in this list over Zimbabwe and it's only Partial not Total;

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century

 

Looks like their Solar System algorithms are slightly out and need tweaking.

[MarcG 2,929]

Tried a couple more from the recent and future but the same, only Partial not Totality.

[ThrottleUp 617]

Thats a neat observation, they even paid attention to astronomical phenomena.  They need to model light pollution from cities better from the sounds of it. Hope its fixed in a future patch!

[MarcG 2,929]

18 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

Thats a neat observation, they even paid attention to astronomical phenomena.  They need to model light pollution from cities better from the sounds of it. Hope its fixed in a future patch!

Well yes it's neat but if they calculated the Sun's position, the moon's position, Venus/Mars/stars etc correctly then it would just "work"without needing to pay attention really as it's all in the maths, so it should work just needs a little tweak 🙂