Stellarium

Results incorrect in Windows & Android versions

Asked by Edward D. Isenberg

Regardless of whether I am running Windows 10 or Android 7.1.1, I consistently get incorrect results.

Example 1: On March 3, 2017 at 9:30pm local time in New Delhi, India, Stellarium says the Moon is below the horizon by 9 degrees, while timeanddate.com (https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/india/new-delhi?month=3&year=2017) says it won't set until 11:19pm local time.

Example 2: On the same date in New York City, Stellarium IN WINDOWS 10 says The Moon will SET in the West at 10:20 AM !!! In ANDROID, at 10 am local time, it says it's dark, since the altitude of the Sun is -45 degrees !!!

Example 3: Manually putting in NYC's latitude at 40 degrees 42 minutes and 46 seconds, only to have the latitude change spontaneously so that the seconds are 45 instead of 46. This happens repeatedly.

As an aside trying to set a city by the country/city name in the Android version is usually impossible, since one must scroll through all of the cities in alphabetical order, and if one accidentally touches the wrong part of the screen, it loses track, and one has to start all over again. Trying to get to the "N's" in either India or the United States is, at least for me, impossible. I accidentally make a mistake & have to restart every single time.

I used to use Stellarium all the time, but after a long break from amateur astronomy due to illness, I now find the software completely useless. What a shame!

Edward D. Isenberg

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Stellarium Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Alexander Wolf (alexwolf) said : 		#1

Everything written here does not make any sense without specifying program versions. And yes, I see you are set totally wrong time zones.

Revision history for this message
gzotti (georg-zotti) said : 		#2

Results for stock 0.16.0 on Windows 10:

(1) Selected New Delhi in the location menu. Date 2017-03-03. Moonset is around 23:19 (UTC+5:30, time zone set automatically). The sun is at -61° at this time.
(2) Selected NYC in the location menu. Date 2017-03-03. Moonset is around 23:40 (UTC-5, time zone set automatically). The sun is at -55° at this time.
(3) you can have seconds in the geographic coordinates even with hundredths. Cannot reproduce your issue. I cannot comment on details in the Android version, but this looks like a rounding error which should however not cause too much harm for most applications (1 arcsecond offset are about 30m on the ground).

I agree with Alexander that this (1-2) indicates either old version use without the required mental time zone gymnastics or otherwise wrong time zone handling when operating a current version.

Proper time zone handling was a long-time issue. The desktop versions here now finally work, as long as time zone data is correct.

Please discuss issues of the Android version on the support website of that version. (find it via Google Play?) We cannot fix these.

Revision history for this message
gzotti (georg-zotti) said : 		#3

Marking as solved.