Celestia Forums

I was simulating in Celestia the lunar eclipse that is to occur today, Oct 27, and it appears Celestia doesn't simulate lunar eclipses. The Earth doesn't cast a shadow on the Moon in Celestia. I know that objects in Celestia will cast a shadow so I don't know why Earth didn't cast a shadow on the moon.

Polchey,

I suspect you've accidentally turned off Eclipse Shadows. Double check to make sure you have "Eclipse Shadows" enabled in the "Render" menu, "View Options..." popup.

Eclipse shadows are drawn even when using "Render Path: Basic" so the eclipse should be visible no matter what version of Celestia you're running on any platform.

But, what version of Celestia are you running on what kind of system?

If you're running the Windows version of Celestia:

Select Navigation menu
Select Eclipse Finder
Specify "Find /moon/ eclipse on /Earth/"
Set appropriate dates (leave as defaults)
Select the button Compute (wait)
Select "Earth Moon 28Oct2004 00:09 05:51"
Select the button "Set Date and Go to Planet"

It goes to the Moon during the middle of the eclipse (at 03:06) and draws an invisibly dark Moon.

To get the time right, make sure you're displaying UTC, not your local time: there should be no check in front of "Show Local Time" in the "Render" menu. Then you can manually go to the time 03:00 on 28 Oct 2004 using Celestia on any platform.

Does this help at all?

I have no problems seeing the eclipse on my system:
512MB 2.4GHz P4, WinXP Pro, SP2
128MB FX5200, Forceware v61.76
Celestia 1.3.2 final & 1.4.0 pre1

Yes, I had eclipse shadow turned off. I didn't know the eclipse shadow can be turned off and I wonder why it was off in the first place. But it works fine now with it turned on.

Last night I was watching the actual lunar eclipse with other members of my astronomy club. At the same time I was showing people the eclipse as shown on Celestia. The moon in the actual eclipse was a haunting shade of reddish-brown. Be nice if someone could incorporate this into the Celestia version of lunar eclipse. Just a wish!

1)clic "Navigtion"

2)clic "Eclipse fider"

3)clic ...

4)clic "Compute"

5)voila