Lunar Terminator Paradox(notes.secretsauce.net) |
Lunar Terminator Paradox(notes.secretsauce.net) |
Lunar elevation is sidereal, so the maximum range is determined by the viewer's latitude. The moon's orbital plane is not perfectly aligned with that of the sun-earth so there's another component there, but this only varies +/- 5 degrees of the sun's declination.
Lunar phase is synodic, so there's no significant variation in the observed illuminated portion with the moon's elevation over one night.
The full moon occurs when the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, so it rises at sunset, transits the meridian at midnight and sets at sunrise, (+/- a few minutes for seasonal variation).
Here's a nice visualisation of the lunar analemna - the figure described by the apparent position of the moon over a month - from Mt. Laguna at 32.8 degrees north. https://www.hpwren.ucsd.edu/news/20250212/
I also found this page with a decent explanation of the apparent effects of orbital cycles. https://www.cyclecalcs.com/learn/synodic-sidereal.html#faq
Moon follows the sun to the west so to move moon "higher" up in the sky you need to rewind time (15deg/hour). In e.g. 4 hours moon barely moves in it's 28 day cycle so the moon will look exactly the same (you can take a picture and compare). It's the earth rotation that make moon "go down" or up. I've read your article 2 times and I still don't understand what is apparent problem, no wonder AI had trouble. Also it's hard to reason about up and down when moon move along ecliptic which is curve. Down at noon points elsewhere as down at sunset.
I think its pretty incomprehensible odds if you ask google.
But I could be wrong I know literally nothing about astronomy, it just always surprised me its not common, but it be cool if someone could explain that
It is an interesting coincidence. But the statistician in me feels like calculating the probability is a bit spurious. For one, not all combinations of distance and size are equally likely, and running physical simulations to try and get decent Monte Carlo estimates of the odds feels a bit suspect - I imagine a decent chunk of what you’d be measuring is the influence of parameters whose values are empirically unknowable.
But, even more than that, it comes from the same place that requires me, when a cashier sees the total is exactly $50 and asks, “What are the chances of that?” to actively suppress the urge to say, “About the same as for $59.37.”
I do appreciate your time and your feedback and Im not great at patience but Im going to try because I am dim in many subjects.
I meant an exact solar eclipse where the Sun and the moon seem to match perfectly.
As such the math odds are low.
Finally, if I ever went to a shop and I was charged a round number like $50, or in my case even $3 I would immediately assume I am being scammed, as that is rare given the context. ( which incidentally happened to me once in Barcelona due to a local spanish barman trying to charge me a tourist tax ).
But I am grumpy and it is late, please forgive coarseness of my reply.
The software is being written to teach the user something, but it’s not novel software, or a novel problem, and the creator doesn’t actually care about the process of making the software, or actually thinking about how to solve the question. But they have access to an automatic wheel reinvention machine and so...
The LLMs have read all of the internet, and are thus quite good at answering questions like this, and I have zero problems asking them about it. In THIS case, the answers available on the internet kinda suck, which made the LLM suck as well.
...have done this many times for friends! A torch and a yoga ball work nicely ;)
Also since the Sun-Earth distance varies and so does the Earth-Moon distance, the coverage of the Sun varies. We sometimes get annular eclipses where the Sun is not totally covered.