{"id":1202,"date":"2017-08-20T22:15:12","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T14:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2024-02-16T21:09:09","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T13:09:09","slug":"see-the-august-21-solar-eclipse-using-stellarium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/see-the-august-21-solar-eclipse-using-stellarium\/","title":{"rendered":"See the August 21 Solar Eclipse using Stellarium"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s no way I can go to see the upcoming solar eclipse in the United States – I live too far away. However, I fired up my favourite solar system simulator, called Stellarium<\/a>, and took some screenshots I’d like to share with you.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stellarium allows you to see the sky from almost anywhere in the solar system. I set the latitude and longitude to that of Carbondale, Illinois: That’s N 37 34′ 4.3″, and W 89 06′ 10.0″<\/a>. From there, Stellarium shows the moon obscuring the sun, and the stars gradually appearing:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The sky darkened in a total eclipse, as simulated by Stellarium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An eclipse of the sun happens when the moon casts a shadow on the earth. To get a good look at the shadow, I set my location to the moon:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Earth, seen from the moon, during a solar eclipse, as simulated by Stellarium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This can help you understand why the eclipse is not visible everywhere. The moon is large, larger than a continent, but smaller than the earth. Its shadow only makes a dark patch on the earth, it can’t darken the whole planet.<\/p>\n

The earth can darken the whole of the moon, though – that’s called a lunar eclipse, and when it occurs, it’s visible from anywhere the moon is visible.<\/p>\n

Usually the shadow of the moon misses the earth completely. It’s easy to understand why if you view the eclipse from Mercury:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The solar eclipse viewed from Mercury, as simulated by Stellarium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The moon and earth are like two peas at the ends of a foot-long string. It’s very rare for us to pass through the moon’s shadow. And even here, the moon and earth appear closer than they are – with Mercury so close to the sun, the earth, moon and Mercury are almost aligned.<\/p>\n

Finally, here’s what the eclipse would look like if you somehow stood on the sun, and blacked out its glare:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The eclipse, as seen from the sun, simulated by Stellarium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s no way I can go to see the upcoming solar eclipse in the United States – I live too far away. However, I fired up my favourite solar system simulator, called Stellarium, and took some screenshots I’d like to share with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[484],"tags":[365,367,374,373,576,575],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1269,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}