Friday, June 25, 2010

View the Lunar Eclipse with Google Maps

HeyWhatsThat Eclipse Simulator
Tonight's partial lunar eclipse is best seen from the Pacific in the middle of the night or in the western U.S. just before dawn. The upcoming July 11th total solar eclipse will be seen to best advantage in the South Pacific.

I only know this because of HeyWhatsThat's latest Eclipse Simulator. Here's a video of the simulator in action showing the July 11th solar eclipse,



The simulation uses two instances of the Google Earth plug-in, one showing the Earth and the other the sky. You set your location by clicking on the Earth, set the time by clicking on the green timeline, and start an animation by clicking on the timeline's arrow. Use the drop-down menu on the bottom right to view other eclipses.

(Note that the timeline shows your computer's local time, not the time at the chosen viewer location.)

________________

No comments: