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Look at this Amazing Munar Eclipse . it caught my eye :o


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wtf, the image doesnt show -.-

The URL is formatted incorrectly, and Dropbox is notoriously flaky for sharing images. Try imgur or some other service and you'll see better results.

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Since the Mun's orbit is at 0 degree inclination it means it aligns with the sun for an eclipse every "duration of munar orbit"+("distance covered of kerbin's solar orbit while the Mun does one full orbit"/"total length of kerbin's solar orbit")*"duration of munar orbit". Well almost, actually you need to keep adding the ("distance covered of kerbin's solar orbit during the time the Mun catches up to new solar position in the sky"/"total length of kerbin's solar orbit")*"duration of munar" orbit part for infinity as it should be an infinite geometric series. Luckily though since we know the Mun eventually does eclipse the Sun and kerbin doesn't really travel too fast around its orbit the ratio we need to keep adding should be smaller than 1 which means that an the sum of infinite ratios we would need to count to know when the eclipse happens is indeed a fixed number rather than infinity.

Overall, without doing the math (too lazy to count the exact numbers), I would say that it happens on average at least once per two Mun orbits around Kerbin. So not a month.

EDIT:actually wait, if the Mun is traveling around Kerbin in the same direction as Kerbin is around the sun it should actually be (duration of munar orbit)-(sum of infinite series of "catch up" ratios). Circles make everything complicated. But that means it actually happens at least once every orbit and sometimes twice! Mind=blown. Either way munar eclipses are indeed quite frequent.

Edited by Pulstar
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It would be awesome if in some future update, they could have celestial bodies cast shadows on others. So the sky and ground on Kerbin would actually get dark as the Mun's shadow passed over. And likewise the entire Mun would get dark when Kerbin blocks the sun.

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I once had a perfect total eclipse on the instant of takeoff on an unmanned rescue mission for the Mun.

About ten minutes later, I came down over the Mun, tried to kill my horizontal velocity, failed, and put a reasonably expensive black mark on the surface. This was before I knew how to screenshot or quicksave (nooooob I know).

I'm not superstitious, why do you ask?

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  • 3 years later...
1 hour ago, Lemcal Kerman said:

Arn't these solar eclipses?

Yes indeed, they are.

Though it's also worth pointing out that this thread is ancient-- over 3 years since the last post-- so questions & comments about it now are kinda moot.  :wink:

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