Minmus charged up my batteries?

[Agent86]

So I was landing a mobile girder on minmus for my base there, and it's only power generation and storage are two Z100 batteries, and two 1x6 solar panels. No RTG's. As misfortune would have it, night was descending on the sea where my base is, so I had to land in the dark. As I approached, my batteries were getting critically low, down to about 1/5th capacity, so it was going to be a little bit tight. The sun was on the other side of minmus, but the solar panels were extended anyway. when I got to around 150m, suddenly the charge in my batteries raced up to 100%.

My only (according to real world physics) theory is that the reflected light from the frozen sea, that is, light from other stars and perhaps the Mun was reflecting off the ice and into the panels, which are pointing straight down. Their current exposure is 0.99, despite it being night time. I guess it's possible that minmus could be generating an electric charge by induction, if it had a strange metal core, but even in that case, I've got no receiving core on my lander, except perhaps, the electric motor stators in my wheels, but that's a bit far fetched.

So what's the deal?

[Johnno]

Swamp gas reflecting the light from Jool.

[Invincible Walnut]

Kerben's second moon might be one giant battery.

[painking]

Possibly A terrain bug. I landed on the dark side of the Mun once, but my solar panels were facing downwards through the moon and apparently had direct sunlight.

[Agent86]

Incidentally, parallel parking a 7 ton girder on minmus is somewhat challenging, I've discovered.

[stupid_chris]

Did you fire your engines? You could've recharged this way

[runboy398]

Free electricity!

[runboy398]

Either that,or you could have fired your engines.But I am not sure of the moonlight reflecting off of the surface theory,since I think that reflection off of a planet's surface has not been implemented into Kerbal Space Program yet.

[Stankleberry]

I have noticed the same issue on Minimus.

[Tiron]

As Pointed Out, it could've been either you firing your engines (most engines produce electricity while on) or Minmus suddenly failing to block the sunlight to the solar panels.

[1001sd]

The minmus not blocking sunlight bug has been seen before. I'll see if I can find the thread.

Edit 1:There is this thread, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32147-Minmus-has-no-occlusion but I was looking for another.

Edit 2: This is what I was looking for http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/27689-Free-Juice-%28Bug-maybe-maybe-not%29

Edited August 10, 2013 by 1001sd