Later this year I'm flying from Europe to the West Coast of Canada, and it seems I'll be in daylight for the entirity of the flight (departing 2PM local, landing 4PM local after a 10 hour flight).

Edit: well, FR24 has a handy flight tracking that includes the daylight progression: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/sq23#3de5a306

So they flew 18 hours and experienced a full daylight cycle, arriving just before the second sunrise...

https://www.nrel.gov/grid/solar-resource/solpos

I notice that the stars don't seem to be rendered correctly. If you zoom out, you can see the sun's position relative to the stars. As you scroll the date slider through the course of a year, the sun should make a complete 360-degree revolution around the ecliptic. Or, when the camera view is locked to the sun, the stars should appear to revolve relative to the sun.

Instead, the sun appears motionless against the stars, regardless of the time of year. (If the demo used actual star positions, I would be able to point to how the sun was in the wrong constellation for a given date. But the starfield is randomly generated, so you have to actually observe the sun in motion to see the bug.)

Thanks for the find!

One minor nit I notice is the Latitude slider on the right seems reversed from what I'd expect. I would expect Slide UP to move North and increasing positive latitude numbers, and DOWN for South/negative, but this implements the opposite. It seems this may be to match the Longitude negative numbers at the top, but that convention seems a lot less necessary, i.e., either would work for longitude and +=UP/-=DOWN for latitude seems like it is more important to match with the physical and mental models?

Thanks for the cool tool, I'll be using it a lot for garden planning and solar panel install (and just cool to look at)!

https://farrant.me/coffees/

The tilt of the globe on that page changes throughout the year to match The Earth’s tilt when viewed from from The Sun. The initial rotation of Earth is correct for the time of day too. This means that, when you load the page, you see The Earth as The Sun currently sees it.

I’m not sure anyone has ever noticed, and I’m sure my calculation isn’t perfect, but I enjoy watching it change over the course of the year.

is it possible to add moon to it as well. that would make it more intuitive.. looking at the night moon its possible to find where the sun is but not possible to imagine the respective location of earth with respect to moon and sun.