Blew my mind

[Rockin Robbins]

By far, the best planetarium astronomy software on the web available for free is Carte du Ciel. "Amazing" does no justice to this program, on a par with many of the expensive commercial software for amateur astronomers. It makes Stelliarium look like a horse and buggy next to a Ferrari.

I used it to prove that the positions and phases of the Moon in SH4 are just all wrong. Especially entertaining was a screenshot of a half moon a couple of degrees from he sun. I was able to prove that both the phase and position of the moon were completely wrong for that day in history.

Here, for instance, is a view of the Sun traveling ACROSS the sky (it doesn't rise and set like it does for us normal people) in this horizon plot animation from Dutch Harbor on the day of an annular eclipse of the sun! Of course the stars wouldn't be visible at that time, probably even during the eclipse, but they are there for clarity of where the Sun is in the sky.