Eclipse Calculator 2

Eduard Masana

About this app

This is an application to compute and simulate astronomical events. A tool for astronomy lovers that allows to know in a simple way the general and local circumstances for solar and lunar eclipses and planetary transits.

Which future eclipses will be visible from my location? And from the antipodes? What will they be like? How long will they last? And in the past, how many eclipses have there been? All these and many other questions about both, eclipses and planetary transits, are answered with this tool. Now, all the information about these astronomical events in your mobile thanks to this application.

Characteristics:

* Access to data of all solar and lunar eclipses and planetary transits between 1900 and 2100 (extendable to 1550 - 2300).

* Computation of general circumstances of the phenomenon, including global visibility maps.

* Computation of the local circumstances of the phenomenon for any place in the world (beginning, end, duration, altitude of the Sun or Moon above the horizon, ...)

* Interactive maps to know the circumstances of the eclipse.

* Simulation of the phenomenon from your observational point.

* Simulation of the path of the Moon shadow on the Earth's surface (solar eclipses).

* Simulation of the Moon's path through the Earth's shadow (lunar eclipses).

* Choice of observation place from a database, manually or from the GPS coordinates.

* Lunar limb profile and Baily's beads.

* Sky at totality.

* Continuous tracking of your position and update of the contact times. Useful if you observe the eclipse on board a ship.

* Possibility of adding the eclipses and transits to the personal calendar.

* Countdown.

* Available in English, Catalan, Spanish, Danish, Polish, Portuguese, Thai and Chinese.

Ratings and reviews

This application is very good, it has helped me many times with astronomical observations, as well as clarifying the details of astronomical events of the past years. However the realized choice between the years (1550 and 2300) is not fast in my opinion. It would be better to make an additional (or alternative) set of the desired year from a numeric keypad.

Rather advanced for amateur backyard astronomers. Calendar feature does not work. Unable to fill in calendar blanks as app does not open keyboard, nor do the dropdowns work. The advance notification settings sre VERY limited (like very early Android (think Donut)). There are better, less technical apps that fullfill the same purpose as this app.

This is a great app. But it has some annoying issues. 1/ the date filter requires to hit Done before Accept 2/ the "real view" is a great tool but should be usable without GPS once a location has been selected, and without time/date restriction so that it can be used NOW to understand how it works. Also, it looks like the virtual grid is suspect, as it doesn't work well when tilting the device: there seems to be a scaling issue.

What’s new

Added a simulation showing the Moon's shadow moving across Earth's surface during solar eclipses.
Minor changes and improvements.