abadideaApr 20
I thought a guy was trying to draw me into conversation with a cutesy ice breaker to flirt with me — “how far away do you think the sun is?” — but he really did just tell me how many kilometers away the sun is and left. I have been visited by the Autistic Special Interest Fairy
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07E9
@0xabad1dea there’s a site that tells you that with daily updates (because elliptical orbit):
https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-sun
How Far Away Is The Sun? | TheSkyLive

Precise distance of The Sun from Earth

Apr 20 at 3:02pmWeb
Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 20
@c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea OMG, that is a site I did not know that I needed, but apparently I really do! Except now, I want to make my own with updates every second.
Yes, #ActuallyAutistic and in love with Sol and all her retinue.
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07E9Apr 20
@bhawthorne @0xabad1dea yeah, now I’m all, “how hard is this to figure out? Apogee, perigee, figure out when those happen - wait, isn’t our orbit processing some way that would change those dates over geologic (astronomic?) time?”
Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 20

@c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea I’m sure this guy could help us out:

https://www.earthspacelab.com/app/earth-revolution/

The Earth's orbit around the Sun | Earth Space Lab – interactive 3D animations 🌍

What does the Earth's orbit around the Sun look like?

Show threadDatalineApr 20
@bhawthorne @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea Okay, here's some bait to make your day: It would be fun to do one that accounts for the rotation of the Earth, your geolocation, and the terrain height at the given coordinates, thereby truly answering the question "how far am I, personally, from the sun" with up to the minute calculations.
Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 20
@somebody @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea Ah, but then you also need a 3D reconstruction of the solar surface from the space weather satellites, as those changes will dwarf piddling little things like elevation or altitude above earth’s mean sea level.
Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 20

@somebody @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea I just learned that with the combination of millisecond pulsars and gravity wave background signals, researchers have been able to refine the location of the solar system barycenter to a point just outside the surface of the Sun (with a precision of about 100 meters). Thanks, Jupiter!

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab7b67

Radware Bot Manager Captcha

Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 20
@somebody @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea No idea why the preview is for a captcha. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab7b67
Radware Bot Manager Captcha

Show threadTed MielczarekApr 20
@c0dec0dec0de @bhawthorne @0xabad1dea it's interesting that you're thinking about the difficulty at the long scale, where I'm thinking about the short scale. If you want the site to update every second, the problem is that your clocks are not accurate enough!
Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 20
@tedmielczarek @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea Oh, my clocks are frequently synchronized with a stratum 1 ntp time server which is within microseconds of the stratum 0 reference clocks. My clocks are within one second (probably within milliseconds) of the reference.
Show threadTed MielczarekApr 22
@bhawthorne @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea OK maybe *your* clocks are accurate enough, but I don't believe this holds for computers in general. 🙂
Show threadOLD Bhawthorne accountApr 22

@tedmielczarek @c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea When I ran various flavors of Unix back in the mid-1980s to 1990s, once the NTP protocol was established, every computer running Unix was sync’ed similiarly. As they are Unix-based operating systems, it holds for anyone with an Internet-connected iOS or MacOS device. Every Linux device should be as well. Oh, and every mobile phone is synchronized as well.

So what does that leave? A bunch of PCs running Windows.

In other words, it does hold for computers in general, with the rather large exception being the mess of things running Microsoft’s operating systems. Not that those don’t also support NTP, but they are rarely configured correctly, and the cheap clock chips used in commodity PCs drift notoriously.

Show threadWillem JanssenApr 20

@c0dec0dec0de @bhawthorne @0xabad1dea Naah, only Mercury does that orbital ellipsis rotaty thingy due to general relativity. Right? [one wiki rabbit hole later…] Woah, Earth’s perigee…eh…sol rotates over 112,000 years! That’s nothing in astronomical/geological scales!
(Mercury’s apsidal precession is *different* due to relativity, not present at all as I thought.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession

Apsidal precession - Wikipedia

Show threadBodhipaksaApr 20

@c0dec0dec0de @0xabad1dea The page for the moon is interesting, because you can see the distance changing in real time. I'd imagine the sun's page updates in the same way, but the distance is just slower to change.

https://theskylive.com/moon-info

The Moon | TheSkyLive

Complete observing guide and realtime information about The Moon for astronomy and science enthusiasts at all levels.