| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 07/29/05 05:58 AM |
| View in Google Earth |
Solar position calculator
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My first bit of php code is used to calculate the current position of the sun.
I beleive the calculations are accurate....
Paul.
ink_polaroid
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| (Sysop) |
| 07/29/05 09:29 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Hey, very nice. Your calculations seem to be pretty accurate.
If you want to make them dead-on-balls-accurate (technical phrase), google for VSOP87...
| bkdelong |
| (Explorer) |
| 07/29/05 01:01 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Anyone think about doing the Moon or other planets? Granted you can't get them into individual globes, but it would b nifty to see where in the sky they are.
Can KML's dynamically change icons? Perhaps in addition to Lunar position, you could have a different icon for each phase.
| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 07/29/05 01:39 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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I think that anything other than the sun or moon is probably better handled by dedicated astronomy apps. I have considered looking at doing the moon, althought it is a fair bit more complex than the sun (which I suspect I may have simplified a bit).
I haven't tried changing icons dynamically, but as it is simply a tag in the placemark I don't see any reason wjy it can't update dynamically. If anyone can present the required equaitons in a form I can understand (it has been a long time since I did any real maths) I will be willing to give it a crack.
The biggest problem I ran into with doing the sun was that all the pages on the web expected you to be wanting the position relative to where you are rather than it's positoin on the globe, I suspect the moon will be just as painful :-)
Paul.
| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 07/29/05 01:47 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Balls on accurate eh? That sounds like it comes from the same tehcnical manual as 'fubar'd and 'totally shaffted'
I wish I had found that library when I started this, the number of pages I found with differing formulas for the equation of time I thought that perhaps noone was sure :-). Although to be fair as that looks to be a C library it would kind of defeat my learning php as I spend all day using C.
Mine might not be perfectly accurate, but it seems good enought to me. :-)
Paul.
| Tiresias |
| (Tourist) |
| 08/04/05 11:47 AM |
Re: Solar position calculator
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Hi - love your sun!
nb it goes well with the following day/night overlay:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/40629/page/12
Would it be possible to post a version where the sun icon is not at ground level, but set to a suitable altitude? It looks really cool when i try it with a static version of your icon...
| barryhunter |
| (Guide) |
| 08/04/05 01:26 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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I agree, it works really well at high altitude! Esp with the overlay mentioned in the last post
Just a pity that GE hides the placemark when its on the other side of the earth
(basically when zoomed out, as soon as it would be on the other side of the earth to what you can see, (but still is visible beucase so far off the ground!) the icon is hidden 
)Anyway thanks for posting this! Barry
| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 08/05/05 02:10 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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I will have a look at doing it.
Although I am off on holiday tomorrow for a week, so it will not be for while.
This place http://www.die.net/earth/ has a great sunlight/cloud cover map, but the guy seems to be concerned with bandwidth so I have't distributed a kml for it.
Paul.
| Tiresias |
| (Tourist) |
| 08/05/05 06:45 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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The fact that the curvature of the earth cuts out the view of objects that should in fact be visible because of their altitude also affects the geostationary satellites i have, though they still look great...
(nb: get them here:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/60045/an/0/page/11#60045)
Maybe this is something that should be raised for the development guys, however you do that...
| chocky |
| (Tourist) |
| 08/17/05 12:58 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Here's a nice little app for your desktop that combines two satellite images to create a dynamic wallpaper showing the areas on Earth where the sun shines.
Earthwatcher
| ninjaroger2 |
| (Tourist) |
| 09/06/05 06:24 AM |
Re: Solar position calculator
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Looks good.
Now do the moon.
Thanks.
| derekins |
| (Tourist) |
| 09/06/05 07:27 PM |
Re: Solar position calculator
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Is there a way to change the altitude from 0 meters? If someone could explain to me how. The sun is going to cause all sorts of fires at that altitude!!!
Thanks!
| Crogon |
| (Tourist) |
| 09/12/05 07:14 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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The altitude is set within his little php applet. I would like to request that it be set to at least 3600000 (the same height as the satellites). Would be greatly appreciated. Maybe as an alternate kml?
any chance you would release the php code? Then maybe we could copy the function. I know i'd like to build one to do the moon with phases.
| Grimmie |
| (Tourist) |
| 09/19/05 07:30 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Moon, Moon, Moon!
| xChipperx |
| (First Post) |
| 10/20/05 04:10 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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can you do a little quick fix maybe and set the altitude to it's max
| IanUK |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/08/05 02:18 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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This overlay is awesome!! It's updating about every 5 seconds and I'm mezmorised by watching the sun go across the earth, I can't believe how fast it goes!
| pmaxfield2 |
| (Explorer) |
| 11/08/05 07:26 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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I wonder how hard it would be to make a trace line as well? It would be interesting to see a year's worth of the sun's path....
| pmaxfield2 |
| (Explorer) |
| 11/08/05 11:30 PM |
| View in Google Earth |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Here's a shot at a year's worth of the solar path. I cheated a bit; each ring is 5 days' motion, but now I realize the spiral is incorrect then. Anyway, it's a first try.
| typhoid |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/11/05 12:28 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Quote:
My first bit of php code is used to calculate the current position of the sun.
Nice!
| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/15/05 01:24 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Ok.
I will try and get height added this week. I have been rather busy with other things.
Paul.
| FrankB |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/16/05 12:46 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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If you place the sun high above the surface, the whole point of this layer is lost. It is ment to show which spot on the surface the sun is currently directly above. With just a small change of the suns altitude this spot will change with your viewing angle, and at 36,000 km it will be totally useless. It will look more realistic, but the purpose of the layer is lost.
Edit: I can se that the altitude has been changed in the updated placemark. Too bad, I thougt it was a great feature. Totally useless now.
| sparqi |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/16/05 01:07 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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I tried setting height to 0m. This works until the next update, then it reverts to a defined height.
One idea I had was to draw a connecting line to ground. This also gets reset on update.
...dtw
| FrankB |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/16/05 01:14 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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I just noticed that you can change the height in the parameter of the call to the php-file: Select Edit and set HEIGHT=0 in the URL.
Thanks a lot for making it controllable this way.
| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/17/05 01:06 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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No worries.
I personally prefer it at ground level, but quite a few people had asked for the height to be adjustable. So I thought I would add the functionality.
Paul.
| PaulBuxton |
| (Tourist) |
| 11/17/05 01:28 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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If you edit the height parameter the it should be ok.
E.g.
Change
http://www.gelp.net\files\sun.php?ISKML=1&HEIGHT=2000000
to
http://www.gelp.net\files\sun.php?ISKML=1&HEIGHT=0
| CyBeR7 |
| (Tourist) |
| 12/24/05 06:08 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Hi! I don't know what happened because i'm using this link http://www.gelp.net\files\sun.php?ISKML=1&HEIGHT=2000000 and my sun just felt down to ground level a couple of days ago. Is this problem occourring to others too?
answer plz. Great app and it's a pitty that its not running well
2006/01/19 - Thanks for fixing the file
| sunposition |
| (Tourist) |
| 01/18/06 01:23 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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SunPosition Online, from sunposition.net, 100% spot on. Uses Magnetic declination so if you select 'True north' the calculations are ajusted for compasses, you can also select from a 'True north' calculation. To get access to all 48,000 odd locations you will need to sign up, non members get 'limited' access to just over 8,000 locations. Sun's azimuth, altitude, and shadow factor calculated at 15 minute intervals 'Members' for your date or date range, you even get a graph. Members can calculate for their own latitude and longitude locations, save locations to their favourites menu for quick access. The application makes calculations for the magnetic declination for every location. There is no easier or more an accurate way of getting these calculations 'as far as I know or can find' than SunPosition by http://sunposition.net/
Hope this helps
| FrankB |
| (Tourist) |
| 12/22/06 09:00 AM |
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IT DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE !!!
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Please fix it.
| norbre |
| (First Post) |
| 05/05/07 02:25 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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it is not working anymore.. somebody knows a working version of Solar Calculation in Google Earth?
| AVERMAN |
| (Tourist) |
| 05/05/07 07:39 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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This thing looks cool. Pity it doesnt work no more.
| danescombe |
| (Master Guide) |
| 11/16/07 04:33 PM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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New Solar position calculator available HERE
| Kaligus |
| (Tourist) |
| 01/26/08 02:51 AM |
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Re: Solar position calculator
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Does anyone know if the lunar position ever came about?