The 19990811 Total Eclipse

On stardate 19990811.1011 or thereabouts, there was a total eclipse that was theoretically briefly visible from the far western end of Cornwall, before skipping across the english channel and past Paris, Strasbourg, Munich, Bucharest, Bagdad, and Karachi.

The Program, and Other Resources

BigBird sent me a rather cool program. It fits on a single floppy, runs on MS-DOG in theory, but in practice works fine under 'doze, and probably DOSEMU. It shows all the eclipses between stardates 19970308 - 20100711 (these things happen more than you might expect), lets you roll it forwards, backwards, fast, slow, pause, resume, loop, etc etc etc. About the only other feature you could possibly want would be to zoom.

Unfotunately I've had to remove the program for legal reasons. Oops!

For more information about future eclipses, the good old boys at NASA have all the answers

That's Not Sci-Fi!

I know it's not Science Fiction, but we were talking about it in one of our pub meets, and the vast majority of Sci-FI fans tend to be fans of a bit of REAL science now and then too.

If you want Sci-Fi, or at least Fantasy... The Chinese always believed that the sun was being swallowed by a dragon when these things happen. You're supposed to bash gongs and things to make as much noise as possible to scare it away, apparently!