Created attachment 176393 [details] screenshot of the eclipse as seen from Barcelone, Catalunya Desktop Planetarium Build: 2024-11-23T20:19:59Z SUMMARY I tried to reproduce the total Solar eclipse of Aug. 12, 2026 as seen from Barcelona. I found out that kstars wrongly predicts the ecipse to be total from Barcelona which it isn't. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. set Geography to Barcelona and time to Feb 26, LT approx 21 hours 2. the Moon should almost cover the Sun as displayed on the star chart 3. measure apparent diameter of Sun and Moon OBSERVED RESULT The Moon's disk is plotted with the correct diameter (correct here means the diameter as given under details is the same as the one I measure with the cursor from the star chart) For the Sun, however, the details-box gives a diameter of 31.6' while I measure with the cursor from star chart ~29,1' i.e. 2.5 minutes of arc less. From the screenshot it is obvious that the diameters don't match. As is the path of totality comes out way too wide. EXPECTED RESULT I would expect the Sun's diameter to be given properly. The above described bug gives a 'bad press' to the otherwise for me perfect program kstars! SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: (available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window) Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Plasma Version: KDE Frameworks Version: Qt Version: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
sorry I MADE A SMALL MISTAKE to reproduce the eclipse, time has to be set to August 12, 2026 LT 21h LT cheers Ulli
Comment on attachment 176393 [details] screenshot of the eclipse as seen from Barcelone, Catalunya I just ran the latest version of kstars 3.7.6 stable built 2025-03-31T22:25:03Z as far as I can tell the problem is still there, the Sun is too small, the moon too big during eclipse I was planning to use kstars for some public talks about the upcoming total eclipse in Spain and it is sort of embarrassing cheers Ulli
Hi Everybody I know that you are probably working hard but I really want to COMPLAIN I just installed the latest version of kstars (3.7.7) and I noted that the error of the program, diameter of Sun displayed wrongly, has not been fixed. I don't know your priorities but in this context I want to explain my frustrations. I am trying to educate the general public about LINUX, open source etc. in general, but especially also about kstars. Moreover, living in Barcelona I try to explain everything about the Aug. 2026 total Solar eclipse to the general public. I would like to use kstars to show what will happen and it is frustrating that such a simple error has not been fixed. I understand that kstars is not meant to predict eclipses, but minimum courtesy would be that someone at least reacts to a well documented and analyzed error in the reporting system! cheers Ulli
Git commit 2833dd4b3fa1d4bf38c1b15ac557ad0dd871efa0 by Jasem Mutlaq. Committed on 01/08/2025 at 08:39. Pushed by mutlaqja into branch 'master'. Use better Sun texture that fills the whole FOV. FIXED-IN:3.7.8 M +- -- kstars/data/textures/sun.png https://invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/commit/2833dd4b3fa1d4bf38c1b15ac557ad0dd871efa0