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Old 08-04-2013, 09:35 PM
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OzEclipse (Joe Cali)
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Young Hilltops LGA, Australia
Posts: 1,186
they all have their idiosyncrasies

Andrew,

Both calculators are very similar. Neither are set to default to the May 10 annular eclipse. You have to select the eclipse of interest from the menu.

Bill has the default set to select the USA 2017 total eclipse. The link you posted to Xavier's page has it's default set to the 2010 total eclipse. Just scroll down to the bottom of Bill's eclipse-chasers.com page and select the appropriate eclipse path.

I know both Bill Kramer and Xavier Jubier. I'm on good terms with both - Xavier might be traveling with me in Newman so don't read anything into the link. Both calculators give equally accurate results. In fact they cross test their software to make sure results are consistent. The only reason I prefer and link to Bill's rather than Xavier's is that you can block copy the circumstances table from Bill's output but not from Xavier's.

When I'm exploring options, I prefer to use Xavier's Google Earth interactive tool. But if you copy the circumstances from that tool, it pastes everything perfectly except it strips the hrs off the event times and just pastes the minutes and seconds. I used his interactive path map as the backdrop to my sunrise referenced map.

Bill's calc lets you paste, but it's foible is that inside the path times are in local time zone, outside, they are in UT but using a 12hr am/pm clock. No problem if you are just looking up your one location but soo confusing if you are doing a large group of locations in and out of the path and across multiple time zones the way I do.

So they all have their idiosyncrasies but they are amazing tools compared to what we had 10, 15, 20 years ago. So, I'm not complaining. These guys have put in serious hours producing these resources. These tools make our planning so easy. I just understand the weaknesses and strengths and use the best features of all of them depending on what I am doing.

Michael Zeiler just released his map set tonight
http://eclipse-maps.com/Eclipse-Maps...13_May_10.html

Michael uses special versions of Bill and Xavier's calculators that generate high spatial res plotting data for his GIS software system. He produced early versions of the Newman maps for us about a month ago but there has been a lot of behind the scenes email circulating about the Newman maps trying to sort out the path refraction corrections.

cheers

Joe

PS I've added screen shots showing the eclipse selector.
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Last edited by OzEclipse; 09-04-2013 at 10:58 PM. Reason: adding screen shots
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