Solar Coaster visualizes the rise and set of Earth's nearest star, Sol, our Sun, and probes for upcoming solar and lunar eclipses. The App uses what astronomers call a local horizon coordinate system when displaying information, which essentially means that your current position is the center of the Universe and all calculated values are relative to you. The simulator is available in three distinct flavors: an App for iOS and macOS, a Today Extension for iOS and a Screen Saver for macOS.
Topics
Solar Coaster stores enough onboard astronomical data to keep it running through the year 2100 AD, which means that all orbital calculations can be performed locally without the need of a network connection. Algorithms are accurate at all longitudes, and latitudes between -81° south and +82° north. Of course, you must have Location Services enabled1 and allow Solar Coaster to access your position for accurate simulation results, and to properly detect eclipses visible at your location. You can also allow Notification Center to keep you informed on when those eclipses will occur.
A sinusoidal curve depicts Sol's path for a single day, Today. An artificial, horizontal, horizon line is drawn such that it intersects the curve at precisely two points, Sunrise and Sunset. This means that all points on the curve above the horizon line are Day, and those below are Night. As the lengths of Day and Night change this horizon line shifts up and down the sinusoidal curve, and a trend direction triangle indicates how the shift is moving. The actual Sunrise and Sunset times are also displayed, in 12 or 24-hour format.
The point exactly midway along the Day portion of the sinusoidal curve is called Solar Noon, and represents the time of day Sol is farthest above the horizon. Solar Noon typically does not coincide with 12 o'clock Noon.
The point exactly midway along the Night portion of the sinusoidal curve is called Solar Midnight, and represents the time of day Sol is farthest below the horizon. Solar Midnight typically does not coincide with 12 o'clock Midnight.
Dawn precedes Sunrise, and Dusk succeeds Sunset. During these times of Morning Twilight and Evening Twilight Sol slowly brightens and dims appropriately.
Earth's nearest celestial neighbor, Luna, our Moon, sometimes makes appearances during the visualization. At Moonrise a smaller, secondary, sinusoidal curve appears and Luna fades-in. Luna is drawn with its proper phase, and rotated to the precise phase angle. At Moonset Luna fades-out.
Touching either Sol or Luna displays a tiny bit of additional realtime information (unavailable for the Today Extension and Screen Saver). Distance and velocity are suffixed with a trend arrow indicating
how the value is changing over time.
Solar Coaster has various settings, help and auxiliary information:
Once a minute orbital calculations are performed and the visualization is updated. This means that if you are patient, very, very patient, you can watch Sol and Luna move! For those not so patient, touch the disclosure triangle and switch into manual You Drive mode (unavailable for the Today Extension and Screen Saver). The simulation is paused and the scene is augmented with informative data, various small, circular, marker points, three larger, colored, touch discs, Solar and Lunar Eclipse Probe controls, and a timer, which begins at +0:00, Now.
In You Drive mode:
The timer shows the elapsed time in hours and minutes of the simulation, whether positive or negative, relative to Now.
Touch the disclosure triangle once again to exit You Drive mode and resume the actual simulation. Don't be surprised if you notice the visualization catch up for lost time. And depending on what the time differential is and whether the simulation time is before or after Now, the tweening may be fast or slow or forward or reverse.
And that's Solar Coaster. Enjoy. Any similarity to the Apple Watch Face Solar is, indeed, intentional.
4.0 - 2023.01.06
3.6 - 2022.08.18
3.5 - 2022.04.01
3.4 - 2022.02.11
3.3 - 2021.05.17
3.2 - 2020.07.25
3.1 - 2020.06.02
3.0 - 2020.02.29
2.1 - 2019.03.21
2.0 - 2018.11.02
1.3 - 2017.06.08
1.0 - 2017.01.02
Overview
1. [ When Solar Coaster first runs, iOS and macOS ask for permission to access your current location with this note: "Your location is required for solar and lunar orbital calculations, and eclipse predictions". If you decline this request a default location of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England is used. To subsequently enable Location Services:
]↩
You Drive Mode
Installation
Be sure to enable Location Services1, described in the Overview section.
In either case double-click the resulting zipped Screen Saver package to unzip it, which creates the module Solar Coaster.saver. Double click the saver module to finish the install and select it from System Settings / Screen Saver.
Acknowledgment
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