Cmdr Orvidius made a flyover estimate of the diameter of the Great Crater of about 100 km, so pretty close to the haversine calculation. Nice job!
I am pretty tired and not feeling too well, and my driving showed it today. I managed to get my chassis down to 28% crossing the final third of the crater, so I am calling it a day and parking up here for the night.
It's worse than that, because here you can pay a bill with a check, or you can pay the check with a bill. Or you can pay a bill with a bill. And those are all slightly different things. I suppose you could also pay a check with a check, but that might seem odd.
Yeah, it was looking like it was a hair over 100km, so 107km sounds about right. It was large enough that I tried glide-mode to get across, but was too low and shallow to keep it running. It was an impressive crater. Not the largest by any means, but still pretty big!
It's a really late update from yesterday. While I didn't make any real latitudinal progress, when I deployed my SRV, the time I had been waiting for had finally come. The neutron star was casting amazing shadows.
In setting up and taking measurements for my Eratosthenes Experiment, I wanted to eliminate as much potential bias as possible, so I did as many things as possible blind.. I opted for two locations in the great crater 180° degrees from each other. I blocked out my latitude and longitude position with a post-it note, so I was going purely on sight and compass. Once I reached my first location, I had my spouse record the lat/lon position, and I took several pictures from several different angles to take shadow measurements from.
From there, I proceeded to my second location, and repeated the process. I took more pictures from similar perspectives. My spouse recorded the lat/lon location, and they calculated the distance between the two points using a simple quick and dirty spreadsheet formula I threw together for it, but they are not going to tell me the distance until after I have analyzed the photos.
Once the pictures were completed, I drove back over to the main canyon I had been driving through before my little side trip to the Great Crater.
My travel map for the day indicating approximate locations, or at least where I am estimating my locations were for the pictures.
Tonight, my first order of business is to analyze the images and mark and measure the shadow angle. I plan on taking the average angle from all of the images from each location. Once I have that done, I will be able to calculate the circumference of this moon.
I should have final results tonight, so stay tuned for this evening to see if this was a rousing success, or complete failure!
Very interesting, can't wait for the results.
Seeing as this circumnavigation is going to take a long time, do you have any plans when the new update hits town if you're still trundling around?
I mean you'll at least have to get your map scan name on this planet.
Very interesting, can't wait for the results.
Seeing as this circumnavigation is going to take a long time, do you have any plans when the new update hits town if you're still trundling around?
I mean you'll at least have to get your map scan name on this planet.
I've been giving this a lot of thought since the news broke yesterday. It appears that there will be some time before the Q4 update releases, but maybe not as much time as many of us had thought. There is also the beta period which will happen well before the final release.
That said, I am not making any immediate changes to my planned route. This expedition was front loaded with the difficult locations and terrain, so the pace should pick up from here soon. I am going to be a bit more dilligent and focused on latitudinal progress though, without scaling down my scope.
I hope to have this expedition completed in the next 30 days or so, and hopefully with enough time to spend some serious hours in the beta getting used to the new mechanics.
Honestly, with how currently unfinished the new exploration changes are, I think the beta is still weeks away at the soonest. I know they said "weeks", but I'm thinking more like 3-6 instead of 1-2. I could be wrong, but I really don't think we'll see 3.3 go live until November.
Honestly, with how currently unfinished the new exploration changes are, I think the beta is still weeks away at the soonest. I know they said "weeks", but I'm thinking more like 4-6 instead of 1-2. I could be wrong, but I really don't think we'll see 3.3 go live until November.
Yeah, I am thinking November as well. Which is earlier than the late December speculation. Regardless, I am fairly confident I will have time to finish this expedition up before even the beta release.
I've been giving this a lot of thought since the news broke yesterday. It appears that there will be some time before the Q4 update releases, but maybe not as much time as many of us had thought. There is also the beta period which will happen well before the final release.
That said, I am not making any immediate changes to my planned route. This expedition was front loaded with the difficult locations and terrain, so the pace should pick up from here soon. I am going to be a bit more dilligent and focused on latitudinal progress though, without scaling down my scope.
I hope to have this expedition completed in the next 30 days or so, and hopefully with enough time to spend some serious hours in the beta getting used to the new mechanics.
I have spent the evening analyzing my photos, marking and measuring angles, and calculating in an effort to apply Eratosthenes' Experiment for determining the Earth's circumference to this moon.
In his experiment, Eratosthenes made the assumption that the Earth was a sphere, and that the suns rays are parallel as they strike the Earth. We now know today that these assumptions are not perfectly correct since the Earth bulges slightly at the equator, and there is a slight angular difference in the suns rays as they strike the Earth, most pronounced at the poles, but only measurable with modern equipment. For the purposes of this experiment, those assumptions have minimal impact on the final result.
As the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, he was well educated and well informed. One of the pieces of information he learned was that on a specific day in June in the city of Swenet there was a deep well that the sunlight reached the bottom, meaning that at noon at that location, the sun must be directly over head at 90°. He also knew that on the same day in Alexandria, there were shadows cast at noon. He measured the noontime angle of the shadow cast by an obelisk. He knew the distance between the two locations. With this information, he was able to use a simple proportion formula d/P = a/360 where d is the distance between two locations, P is the perimeter, or circumference, and a is the difference in shadow angle. Solving for P, we get 360d/a.
While Eratosthenes chose to take his measurements on the summer solstice because of ease of measurement in knowing that one of the locations had an angle of 0°, the same can be done by measuring the angles and subtracting to find the difference.
In my attempt at this experiment, I took images of my ship with shadows cast directly behind it at two different locations directly north south of each other determined to be 73.1 km apart. I then took the images and measured the angle of several shadows to be able to get an average angle at both locations.
I then applied the formula to determine circumference, rounding to the nearest tenth, the same as Eratosthenes.
And arrived at a calculated circumference of 4038.8 km
Using the standard circumference formula C=2πr, the calculation looks like this...
The in game radius for this moon is 650.7 km so
C=2(3.14)(650.7)
4086.4
My experiment and methodology was only 47.6 km or 1.1% smaller than the actual circumference of the moon.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am going to call this
After having the night to sleep on it, as a good researcher and scientist would do, I went back and checked all my work, and found a discrepancy. In my original spreadsheet, I set each cell to only display to one decimal place, but the actual full values were entered, with different numbers of decimal places, or varying degrees of accuracy. I went back and redid the calculations with each value actually being to a methodologically correct degree of accuracy. I should have done it that way to begin with for accurate reproduction purposes, as well as actual numerical accuracy, but regardless, it did yield a different value.
The revised circumference using the same level of accuracy as Eratosthenes for all values is 4048.6, which is a difference of only 37.8 km between actual and calculated, or 0.9% smaller.
I have spent the evening analyzing my photos, marking and measuring angles, and calculating in an effort to apply Eratosthenes' Experiment for determining the Earth's circumference to this moon.
In his experiment, Eratosthenes made the assumption that the Earth was a sphere, and that the suns rays are parallel as they strike the Earth. We now know today that these assumptions are not perfectly correct since the Earth bulges slightly at the equator, and there is a slight angular difference in the suns rays as they strike the Earth, most pronounced at the poles, but only measurable with modern equipment. For the purposes of this experiment, those assumptions have minimal impact on the final result.
As the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, he was well educated and well informed. One of the pieces of information he learned was that on a specific day in June in the city of Swenet there was a deep well that the sunlight reached the bottom, meaning that at noon at that location, the sun must be directly over head at 90°. He also knew that on the same day in Alexandria, there were shadows cast at noon. He measured the noontime angle of the shadow cast by an obelisk. He knew the distance between the two locations. With this information, he was able to use a simple proportion formula d/P = a/360 where d is the distance between two locations, P is the perimeter, or circumference, and a is the difference in shadow angle. Solving for P, we get 360d/a.
While Eratosthenes chose to take his measurements on the summer solstice because of ease of measurement in knowing that one of the locations had an angle of 0°, the same can be done by measuring the angles and subtracting to find the difference.
In my attempt at this experiment, I took images of my ship with shadows cast directly behind it at two different locations directly north south of each other determined to be 73.1 km apart. I then took the images and measured the angle of several shadows to be able to get an average angle at both locations.
I then applied the formula to determine circumference, rounding to the nearest tenth, the same as Eratosthenes.
And arrived at a calculated circumference of 4038.8 km
Using the standard circumference formula C=2πr, the calculation looks like this...
The in game radius for this moon is 650.7 km so
C=2(3.14)(650.7)
4086.4
My experiment and methodology was only 47.6 km or 1.1% smaller than the actual circumference of the moon.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am going to call this
I have spent the evening analyzing my photos, marking and measuring angles, and calculating in an effort to apply Eratosthenes' Experiment for determining the Earth's circumference to this moon.
In his experiment, Eratosthenes made the assumption that the Earth was a sphere, and that the suns rays are parallel as they strike the Earth. We now know today that these assumptions are not perfectly correct since the Earth bulges slightly at the equator, and there is a slight angular difference in the suns rays as they strike the Earth, most pronounced at the poles, but only measurable with modern equipment. For the purposes of this experiment, those assumptions have minimal impact on the final result.
As the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, he was well educated and well informed. One of the pieces of information he learned was that on a specific day in June in the city of Swenet there was a deep well that the sunlight reached the bottom, meaning that at noon at that location, the sun must be directly over head at 90°. He also knew that on the same day in Alexandria, there were shadows cast at noon. He measured the noontime angle of the shadow cast by an obelisk. He knew the distance between the two locations. With this information, he was able to use a simple proportion formula d/P = a/360 where d is the distance between two locations, P is the perimeter, or circumference, and a is the difference in shadow angle. Solving for P, we get 360d/a.
While Eratosthenes chose to take his measurements on the summer solstice because of ease of measurement in knowing that one of the locations had an angle of 0°, the same can be done by measuring the angles and subtracting to find the difference.
In my attempt at this experiment, I took images of my ship with shadows cast directly behind it at two different locations directly north south of each other determined to be 73.1 km apart. I then took the images and measured the angle of several shadows to be able to get an average angle at both locations.
I then applied the formula to determine circumference, rounding to the nearest tenth, the same as Eratosthenes.
And arrived at a calculated circumference of 4038.8 km
Using the standard circumference formula C=2πr, the calculation looks like this...
The in game radius for this moon is 650.7 km so
C=2(3.14)(650.7)
4086.4
My experiment and methodology was only 47.6 km or 1.1% smaller than the actual circumference of the moon.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am going to call this
What a marvellous demonstration of how carefully the environment has been rendered in game, and what a great use of the game to do something that I imagine it was never envisaged it would.
There is not nearly enough rep to give to such an engaging and fascinating endeavour.
I have spent the evening analyzing my photos, marking and measuring angles, and calculating in an effort to apply Eratosthenes' Experiment for determining the Earth's circumference to this moon.
In his experiment, Eratosthenes made the assumption that the Earth was a sphere, and that the suns rays are parallel as they strike the Earth. We now know today that these assumptions are not perfectly correct since the Earth bulges slightly at the equator, and there is a slight angular difference in the suns rays as they strike the Earth, most pronounced at the poles, but only measurable with modern equipment. For the purposes of this experiment, those assumptions have minimal impact on the final result.
As the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria, he was well educated and well informed. One of the pieces of information he learned was that on a specific day in June in the city of Swenet there was a deep well that the sunlight reached the bottom, meaning that at noon at that location, the sun must be directly over head at 90°. He also knew that on the same day in Alexandria, there were shadows cast at noon. He measured the noontime angle of the shadow cast by an obelisk. He knew the distance between the two locations. With this information, he was able to use a simple proportion formula d/P = a/360 where d is the distance between two locations, P is the perimeter, or circumference, and a is the difference in shadow angle. Solving for P, we get 360d/a.
While Eratosthenes chose to take his measurements on the summer solstice because of ease of measurement in knowing that one of the locations had an angle of 0°, the same can be done by measuring the angles and subtracting to find the difference.
In my attempt at this experiment, I took images of my ship with shadows cast directly behind it at two different locations directly north south of each other determined to be 73.1 km apart. I then took the images and measured the angle of several shadows to be able to get an average angle at both locations.
I then applied the formula to determine circumference, rounding to the nearest tenth, the same as Eratosthenes.
And arrived at a calculated circumference of 4038.8 km
Using the standard circumference formula C=2πr, the calculation looks like this...
The in game radius for this moon is 650.7 km so
C=2(3.14)(650.7)
4086.4
My experiment and methodology was only 47.6 km or 1.1% smaller than the actual circumference of the moon.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am going to call this
I have to honestly say that the level of excitement I had as I reached Peak was pretty exhilarating. But this...
I did everything I could to minimize the amount of data and information I had prior to calculation to eliminate as much potential bias as possible. I put a post-it over my lat/lon position on my monitor, and had my wife record the numbers at the two locations so I would not know the distance. I took the screen shots and marked all the angles before measuring them. As I was measuring them, I tried my best not to actually look at the numbers until I had them all marked.
I already had the spread sheet formula and design done, so all it needed was the the angles and the distance. Before I entered those values in, I did the circumference calculation for the in game values.
Filling in the angles, I watched as the averages formed, while the circumference remained zero, waiting for the final piece to the puzzle, the distance. Watching the circumference come into focus with every distance digit entered, the excitement was building until finally, I saw the final numbers, and I just sat there completely stunned for a few minutes. This had actually worked, and was actually closer than I had imagined it would be.
As someone who has done a lot of things in the Elite Dangerous Galaxy, in that moment, I think this is probably the biggest feeling of accomplishment I have ever had.
Now for an additional update...
REVISED NUMBERS
After having the night to sleep on it, as a good researcher and scientist would do, I went back and checked all my work, and found a discrepancy. In my original spreadsheet, I set each cell to only display to one decimal place, but the actual full values were entered, with different numbers of decimal places, or varying degrees of accuracy. I went back and redid the calculations with each value actually being to a methodologically correct degree of accuracy. I should have done it that way to begin with for accurate reproduction purposes, as well as actual numerical accuracy, but regardless, it did yield a different value.
The revised circumference using the same level of accuracy as Eratosthenes for all values is 4048.6, which is a difference of only 37.8 km between actual and calculated, or 0.9% smaller.
