Solar Eclipse timing.

[painking]

Does anyone know how often solar eclipses occur, or if there's a mod that tracks them? This is of course an eclipse of the Mun in front of the sun, though I imagine you could get solar eclipses more frequently on Jool, and have potential for them on Duna. I've only ever personally seen one, and it foreshadowed that my first heavy lifter would fail.

[astropapi1]

IIRC, there's an eclipse every six Kerbin days, because Kerbin isn't tilted like Earth is, and the Mun's orbit is totally equatorial.

[AustralianFries]

These are not especially hard to see when you're in an equatorial orbit around Kerbin. Just get into a high orbit and make sure its not inclined at all (to the best of your ability) and time warp. Every 10 orbits or so will have one (make sure its a high orbit for maximum time warp).

[Ruedii]

Eclipses due to the Mun on Kerbin, or Kerbin on the Mun occur once every Munar month. I'm not sure exactly how many days that is, but it's much shorter than earth's lunar month.

The mun is big enough with small enough orbital inclination for a total eclipse every month when you are at or near the equator, but some other moons are not. Obviously, Gilly and Ike are small enough that you may only get a partial eclipse, even at the equator, due to the inclination of the moon and the tilt of the axis of the planet.

I've found the easiest eclipse to see is a solar eclipse caused by Kerbin as seen from the Mun. However, interestingly on Linux it seems that such eclipses don't cast shadows over the landscape like they should. Because of this there aren't any Munar eclipses visible from Kerbin. I don't know if this affects the Windows version, though. (I've already reported the bug, and the team is working on it.)

Edited June 29, 2013 by Ruedii
More details about shadow casting bug.

[Brotoro]

Ike is larger than Kerbol (angular diameter) as seen for Duna. During my circumnavigation of Duna (see link in sig) my rover batteries mysteriously died...and it was because Ike was eclipsing Kerbol. There is a picture of the end of the eclipse in that thread.

[Mach56]

... Ike are small enough that you may only get a partial eclipse...

Not quite right, Ike is big enough that you get an eclipse once a day.

However, interestingly on Linux it seems that such eclipses don't cast shadows over the landscape like they should.

This is a bug on all versions.

Edit: ninja'd.