illustrating earth:sun geometry and the seasons

[lbachman]

Thank you ALL for the resources at clestialmotherlode. I am an educator who is new to Celestia and could use a tip if you have the time, please.

My objective is to view the earth, centered on the screen, as seen from the sun across an entire year. The goal is to illustrate solar declination (and maybe EOT?) as it varies and determines the seasons. The complimentary script would show the sun moving across the sky dome through a typical year as seen from a selected fixed point on earth, say Houston at 30 deg lat and 95 deg long…

To me the distinction of going to an object and selecting an object is Celestia is still puzzling after a couple hours experimenting… if you have just a second to help it would be terrific.

I am an architect teaching environmental controls at the Univ. of Houston College of Architecture. I would also like to share this tool with my colleagues in SBSE, the Society of Building Science Educators at www.sbse.org

Thanks,

Leonard

[fsgregs]

Leonard:

I cannot help with a script to view Earth from the sun's perspective in the exact manner you wish, but to illustrate the seasons, I have just posted a set of instructions that will work well. It is in the Tutorials section. You can find it here : http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=15711

Enjoy

Frank

[Vincent]

Hi Leonard,

I've been teaching the advance of the seasons with celestia for several years.
To do so, I've built a complete package that contains a customized version of
Celestia with its specific scripts, along with several worksheets for students.
The only problem you might meet is that activities and workseehts are in French.
You may want to give it a try, though. If you, or some other educators appear
to be interested in these activities, I'll make an English version of the scripts.

The whole package (~5 Mb) can be downloaded here:
http://gvince.perso.sfr.fr/celestia/Cel ... r_Nuit.zip

Just unzip anywhere on your disk (or on a flashdrive).
Then, launch the activities by running the celestia_jour_nuit.exe file.
Worksheets are included in the jour_nuit_?l?ve.doc Word document.