Amazing visualizer!
Later this year I'm flying from Europe to the West Coast of Canada, and it seems I'll be in daylight for the entirity of the flight (departing 2PM local, landing 4PM local after a 10 hour flight).
Edit: well, FR24 has a handy flight tracking that includes the daylight progression: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/sq23#3de5a306
So they flew 18 hours and experienced a full daylight cycle, arriving just before the second sunrise...
Thanks for the find!
I notice that the stars don't seem to be rendered correctly. If you zoom out, you can see the sun's position relative to the stars. As you scroll the date slider through the course of a year, the sun should make a complete 360-degree revolution around the ecliptic. Or, when the camera view is locked to the sun, the stars should appear to revolve relative to the sun.
Instead, the sun appears motionless against the stars, regardless of the time of year. (If the demo used actual star positions, I would be able to point to how the sun was in the wrong constellation for a given date. But the starfield is randomly generated, so you have to actually observe the sun in motion to see the bug.)
The tilt of the globe on that page changes throughout the year to match The Earth’s tilt when viewed from from The Sun. The initial rotation of Earth is correct for the time of day too. This means that, when you load the page, you see The Earth as The Sun currently sees it.
I’m not sure anyone has ever noticed, and I’m sure my calculation isn’t perfect, but I enjoy watching it change over the course of the year.
Given the mountains, the sun would appear to set when it descends below some altitude angle. Given the equation in the wikipedia article you'd then just solve for the hour angle. (You'd then have to use your latitude to convert the local solar time to Mountain Standard Time.)
Don't immediately see a way to get the actual estimated sunset out of it, but you can fiddle around manually
One minor nit I notice is the Latitude slider on the right seems reversed from what I'd expect. I would expect Slide UP to move North and increasing positive latitude numbers, and DOWN for South/negative, but this implements the opposite. It seems this may be to match the Longitude negative numbers at the top, but that convention seems a lot less necessary, i.e., either would work for longitude and +=UP/-=DOWN for latitude seems like it is more important to match with the physical and mental models?
Thanks for the cool tool, I'll be using it a lot for garden planning and solar panel install (and just cool to look at)!
Like there’s culture that have a siesta at solar noon and it’s a time to rest: that means the sun’s noon time not our arbitrary time or 12pm every single day. Lunch annd exercise could also follow for productivity gains to happen at particular times of day.
I attempted to build a naive sundial last year and I was surprised when I saw the sun moving east to west (or vice-versa, can't remember) at the same hour. It's very noticeable week over week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma
If only we had a perfectly circular orbit and no axial tilt!
is it possible to add moon to it as well. that would make it more intuitive.. looking at the night moon its possible to find where the sun is but not possible to imagine the respective location of earth with respect to moon and sun.
