Stellarium

Easy solution to Time Zone issues?

Asked by Eduardo Da Silva

Hello,

I have noticed many questions whose solutions involve setting of the correct Time Zone. Perhaps I am wrong, but aren't Time Zones directly related to longitudinal position? If so, maybe Stellarium can automatically accomodate for this fact by calculating the exact Time Zone for any geographical Longitudinal position of the observer. In other words, calculate Local Time from Long. coordinates and round up or down to the nearest accepted Time Zone. This would remove the need for anyone having to manually set it and thus, much less issues would be reported. Or am I way off base here?

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Bogdan Marinov
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Best Bogdan Marinov (daggerstab) said : 		#1

The most common problem with time zones is that the user's system time zone is not set correctly. Stellarium can't deduce the correct time out of thin air, so if its source time is off, no matter the location, the sky will be off.

The other common problem - trying to look at the sky from a different location with a different time zone - can be roughly addressed in the manner you suggest, but time zones are not regular. They follow state borders, and to make matters worse, different countries observe different daylight saving time rules.

There are Launchpad Blueprints for support of the TZ database and location-specific timezones, but right at the moment I really don't have time for it, and for Stellarium in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

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Eduardo Da Silva (eduardoa-dasilva) said : 		#2

Thanks Bogdan Marinov, that solved my question.