A GAAR Side trip?

[Allen Peterson]

On Monday, January 26th 2009 there will be an Annular Eclipse of the sun visible over most of Australia in the early evening around sunset.
Can one of you guys down under confirm the date and times for me? I would like to catch the mid eclipse just before sunset.
I was thinking of taking off in the P-38 from Darwin and going up to 20,000 feet or so, above the weather (there is always an overcast during an eclipse) to see what I could see.
So, does anyone know if FS9, FSX or X-Plane "know" the positions of the sun and moon accurately enough to show the eclipse???
Anyway, since we are all in the area, maybe we could "take flight" that evening to at least enjoy the sunset and report on our observations.

[Andrew Godden]

Allen,

Solar Eclipse will only be a partial eclipse in Australia at 07:59:45 hrs (am), 26 Jan 09. As for flight sims replicating such celestial events, I cannot say.

[Allen Peterson]

Thanks for correcting the time, maybe that's why I didn't see anything except dark at 8:00 in the evening of the 26th. Don't know where I got the idea that it was in the evening.
I'll try again tomorrow with the correct time. In thinking about it, in the sim the sun is realy just a bright blob on the screen, if the moon was there the sun would probably just blot it out.
I should have checked it out before posting.

[rattler1]

Tried it. The wizard programmers at Microsoft are good, but not THAT good. The sun and moon do indeed come into conjunction (good show), but it fact the sun eclipses the moon (0/10 for astronomy). The best way to see it is to position a suitable aircraft up at about 20000', point it at the sun and freeze it. Then adjust the time and location to suit. I tried NSW, NT and WA. Interesting exercise though.

[Allen Peterson]

Well, so much for an idea that didn't work. I'm not giving up on pursuing the sun-moon position thing, though, but I'm taking it off-line since it is no longer a GAAR issue.
However, I would appreciate it if someone in Australia who catches the eclipse would leave a brief post with date and what they saw.
In the meantime, back to the next GAAR leg.