| This is a demo site showing an interactive general purpose solar eclipse simulator. With two solar eclipses in 2023/24, I added eclipse calculations and maps to my photography planning app last year. After getting the basics in place I built this simulator. It tries to give a reasonable photo realistic view of any eclipse by showing phenomena such as the diamond ring, the corona and chromosphere, along with accurate geometry/timings etc. The simulator also accounts for the effect of the uneven lunar surface. It gives accurate simulations of Baily's Beads as they are seen around second and third contact times. These vary from one eclipse to the next and by location. The simulator calculates the lunar 'libration' (the orientation of the Moon) at maximum eclipse and then pulls the appropriate lunar limb profile from an API server. You can toggle between "photo realistic" and "outline" mode to see a vertically exaggerated lunar limb profile. The demo page is set up with three sample eclipses (TSE2024, ASE2024, HSE2031 - the next hybrid eclipse) and a few sample locations for each. You can pinch to zoom and pan (two fingers on mobile). The simulator is packaged as a (rather heavyweight) 'widget' and was built with Vite/React using three.js and some custom shaders. It pulls the data it needs from an astronomy and geospatial web service project I'm working on (radiantdrift.com). Performance in Firefox on Mac is horrible - not sure why as yet. |