In the past, maps of solar eclipse paths assumed Earth and the Moon were spheres. But they're not! And when you take that into account, eclipses get a *whole* lot more complicated. badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/total-ecli... 🔭🧪
New software can make maps of solar eclipse paths that include effects of lunar craters and mountains
There’s a WGS-84 equivalent for Luna?
The oblate spheroid makes everything more complicated.
One very minor thing: the standard math for computing information about an eclipse does take into account that the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere. It includes a term for the flattening as part of pretty much everything you can calculate. It does assume that the they’re smooth, though.
excuse me the moon is perfect as-is
Plus also the flat earth.
Is the sun a sphere?
The moon isn't a perfect sphere, but it's very close to being one. (As is the Earth, FWIW.) I'll live with the approximations. But I'm lazy that way. We had a cloudy day for the last eclipse here. 😦
When I was a kid my dad got us a small refractor scope. The thing that broke my brain was that, while I'm sure I thought about it in the abstract, I saw that it wasn't a smooth disk, and that there were the rough edges of mountains and craters all over. It was wonderful.
And hey! You can subscribe to my newsletter, too. If you don't I'll push the Moon farther away in its orbit and there will never be a total solar eclipse again! MWUHAHAHAHAHA! badastronomy.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Everything, the Universe, and Life
Xavier M. Jubier's software can predict the Baily's Beads. xjubier.free.fr/en/site_page...