Simulate Eddington’s Experiment!
KStars now gives you an option to correct for General Relativistic effects near the sun!
According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, light rays bend around the sun because of the sun’s gravity, and this correction is predicted to be about 0.0005 of a degree for light rays that just graze the sun’s surface. During the Solar Eclipse of 29th May 1919, Arthur Eddington verified this theory experimentally.
KStars now lets you simulate this experiment, which essentially measured the apparent positions of stars near the edge of the sun and showed that General Relativity accounted for the difference in the observed and expected positions of the stars.
Fire up KStars, hit ’0′ to center the sun, and zoom in quite a bit to see the stars at the edge of the sun. Now hit ‘r’ to toggle the relativistic corrections!
JohnFlux, 
hm, and 3 others are discussing. 
Med 8:39 am on July 18, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think it is a great idea Akarsh.
For those who want to test, it is available in trunk, so it will be released with KDE 4.4 early 2010.
Chris 10:33 am on July 18, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ahh, so that’s why it didn’t seem to work with 4.3RC2. Either that or Einstein was wrong all along..
JJ 11:32 am on July 18, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Obviously, Einstein was wrong, he just changed the universe to fit his theories.
btw, does the correction only work for the sun or other stars (or former stars) too?
hm 4:19 pm on July 18, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
it bends around everything!
JohnFlux 5:43 am on July 19, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Just incase anyone cares…
You can type this into google:
(4 * G * mass of the sun) / ((c^2) * radius of the sun) in degrees
gives: = 0.000486611674 degrees
David Mills 2:43 pm on July 19, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You’ve got to love open source. Where else would you get an option allow stargazing during a solar eclipse