"Larry Hudson" <org### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message 
news:44137b78@news.povray.org...
> pavium wrote:
>> ... I switched to modelling Solar Eclipses with POVRay.
>>
>> http://www.pavium.info/Eclipse/
>>
>
> There was a 6 foot (or probably 2 meter) sphere at the trailhead which 
> represented the sun, and at the proper proportional distances along the 
> trail were properly scaled models of the planets.  I thought this was such 
> a fascinating idea that I've always remembered it.
> I have no idea whether or not this trail/model still exists.  Anybody else 
> know about it?

I sure don't know of that one, yet I've heard of such things elsewhere. I 
actually tried a model of the solar system out on my lawn once, had a flat 
grassy yard where I lived before, so I placed a bunch of PVC pipes in the 
ground forming the concentric circles then put pipes with 'blindspot' 
mirrors on the tops (to reflect sunlight) into position to mark where each 
planet was at the time. No correct scale to the distances, though, or else 
I'd never have enough lawn. Also, the gas giant planets, aside from Juptier, 
were basically in the same places every day. Ha ha! And I only did that for 
a couple years. The pulling up and replacing them for each lawn mowing 
wasn't very practical either.  ;)

Back to the eclipse POV scene stuff... Not sure if I'll see the next one 
here or not but will be looking for the penumbral lunar eclipse Tuesday 
morning. Downloaded the file and will see how it does for that one. [editing 
back up to here] {Tried it and I think I'm seeing a shadow on the Earth for 
that partial eclipse, would take me longer to know positively.}

Good writing there on the web site about all that, and the eclipse.pov sure 
is a typical math maze of astro-calc! There are definitely some people out 
there using POV with associations to astronomy. Paul Bourke comes to mind.
-- 
Bob H  www.3digitaleyes.com
http://3digitaleyes.com/imagery/

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