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I just finished watching Reg Park in this movie on YouTube. The story line is interwoven with Greek mythology and a dragon swallowing the moon. It was fun to watch Hercules pick up huge rocks and throw them at people. The event of a dragon swallowing the moon is simply a lunar eclipse. One interesting plot element is Theseus dying in a burning lake of lava in Hades. He dies, but then magically reappears alive. Because Hades is where all the dead people go. Christopher Lee acts the villain, Lico. Ida Galli put in a fine performance as Persephone.

The lunar eclipse of August 27–28, 2026 was awe inspiring for me. The moon changed colors, it jumped about the sky. the weather cooperated with a clear night sky. and I was able to conveniently view it with binoculars in my back yard. Here in Missouri it was Thursday night, while in Europe it was Friday morning.

I first wrote orbtimes almost twenty years ago. Back then there was a big need for personal information managers (PIMs). Having a calendar seemed like a useful way to organize my time, and writing my own seemed the thing to do. I had little awareness of how difficult such a task was, and how limited the prospects actually were. As I studied calendars, I got led to studying astronomy and astronomical calculations.

Back then I was a serious runner and bicyclist. And I used to browse bookstores for mathematics and physics books. That was where I found Peter Duffett-Smith’s book “Astronomy with your personal Computer”. Later I found other books on astronomical computing. This included Jean Meeus works. And a Springer hardcover book by Montenbruck and Pfleger. This book included a 3.5 inch floppy disk.

So I wrote my own calendar program drawing from the code listings in Peter’s book. I coded my program in C because that was what we used at work. And I coded on an Apple macintosh computer. Much of my program was centered on the graphical user interface and the guts of the core Macintosh code libraries. It was called QuickDraw but it should have been called SlowCoding because it seemed to take forever to get my code to work. Some of my time was spent checking and double checking the astronomical calculations. But most of my time was wasted on silly things, like worrying about the text caret in a text box. But I managed to get the majority of the calculations coded. And it ran nicely on the macintosh. I dubbed the program startime.

After about a year or so, Apple discontinued the hardware and the software. So Startime lost its home. Determined to keep my dream alive, I bought an used laptop at the McCarran airport lost and found auction. I installed linux on this laptop. I called the new program Orbtimes and focussed my energies solely on astronomical calculations. I abandoned the graphical calendar and the PIM functions.

And everytime there was a solar eclipse I got motivated to update my program, and to fix the bugs that cropped up. This eclipse was a lunar eclipse and was a new, delightful, and unexpected event.

So, I went to my free software orbtimes and went about calculating the event. I have updated it to compute moon tables.

./orbtimes -B12
location is latitude 36.000000 longitude -90.000000 daylight offset 1.000000
Sunset local day Monday 18:37.731439 October 5 2026
Sunrise local day Tuesday 6:59.224254 October 6 2026
Full Moon Table from 2026 10 (year month) for 12 months.
10: 2026 10 26 (ymd) 4: 1 (hm) -2 (local) 2461339.667689 (jd)
11: 2026 11 24 (ymd) 14:50 (hm) 8 (local) 2461369.118652 (jd)
12: 2026 12 24 (ymd) 1:29 (hm) -5 (local) 2461398.562099 (jd)
13: 2027 1 22 (ymd) 12:21 (hm) 6 (local) 2461428.014723 (jd)
14: 2027 2 20 (ymd) 23:23 (hm) 17 (local) 2461457.474498 (jd)
15: 2027 3 22 (ymd) 10:34 (hm) 4 (local) 2461486.940580 (jd)
16: 2027 4 20 (ymd) 22:14 (hm) 16 (local) 2461516.426392 (jd)
17: 2027 5 20 (ymd) 10:48 (hm) 4 (local) 2461545.950155 (jd)
18: 2027 6 19 (ymd) 0:41 (hm) -6 (local) 2461575.528574 (jd)
19: 2027 7 18 (ymd) 15:44 (hm) 9 (local) 2461605.156222 (jd)
20: 2027 8 17 (ymd) 7:31 (hm) 1 (local) 2461634.813211 (jd)
21: 2027 9 15 (ymd) 23: 6 (hm) 17 (local) 2461664.462745 (jd)
22: 2027 10 15 (ymd) 13:53 (hm) 7 (local) 2461694.078910 (jd)
New Moon Table from 2026 10 (year month) for 12 months.
10: 2026 10 10 (ymd) 16:12 (hm) 10 (local) 2461324.175131 (jd)
11: 2026 11 9 (ymd) 7:23 (hm) 1 (local) 2461353.808233 (jd)
12: 2026 12 9 (ymd) 1: 3 (hm) -5 (local) 2461383.544032 (jd)
13: 2027 1 7 (ymd) 20:26 (hm) 14 (local) 2461413.351784 (jd)
14: 2027 2 6 (ymd) 15:59 (hm) 9 (local) 2461443.166015 (jd)
15: 2027 3 8 (ymd) 9:36 (hm) 3 (local) 2461472.900531 (jd)
16: 2027 4 6 (ymd) 23:59 (hm) 17 (local) 2461502.499964 (jd)
17: 2027 5 6 (ymd) 11: 2 (hm) 5 (local) 2461531.959797 (jd)
18: 2027 6 4 (ymd) 19:42 (hm) 13 (local) 2461561.320847 (jd)
19: 2027 7 4 (ymd) 3: 1 (hm) -3 (local) 2461590.626361 (jd)
20: 2027 8 2 (ymd) 10: 8 (hm) 4 (local) 2461619.922907 (jd)
21: 2027 8 31 (ymd) 17:46 (hm) 11 (local) 2461649.240532 (jd)
22: 2027 9 30 (ymd) 2:42 (hm) -4 (local) 2461678.612634 (jd)

Solar eclipses must occur during new moons. Lunar eclipses during full moons. These calculations are my own. There is no warranty as to accuracy. If you find an error, please let me know!

add to /etc/sources.list.d/

deb [ arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nickstrauss.gpg ] http://apt.nick-strauss.com/apt/debian stable main

and place a binary public key nickstrauss.gpg in the directory /etc/apt/keyrings

from the ascii armored key nickstrauss.asc

—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–

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twcRnPNo7JxfWXyIBMflmUAgcZA1kKiWF1Rs0sVWT8Q/GxY1SvwxrSzF14bpN0oH
4MaXNgicb4AfjU9qOcFzW+dPBpvz1FLgRbAer4ITbP+NIguMe/SqQw8Y/P0CVOrx
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zmC3UuD/mAX7D3MBO13BgaOftiPSGCyGFyeRlyA6I5dj+VwyrrScpuSd3HwI8qnE
aCFsQ0DT0CPQUV+HeelG+XktOdQEU1ZrJK3iqexYt5Vj
=lv0N
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–

orbtimes –help
orbtimes –location –timezone –daylight
–query returns 1 if query is true, 0 otherwise
–selftest will run exhaustive test cases
–verbose will print diagnostic information

Examples:
orbtimes --location "36.048202N 114.950131W 0ft" --timezone -8.0  --daylight 1 
Called with no (or partial) arguments, and it will guess at timezone, location, and daylight savings.
orbtimes --location="48.22N 11.54E 0ft" -v
Called with --moon and/or other orbs.
orbtimes --moon --location="36.048621N 114.951226W" -v
Called with a query
orbtimes --moon --query "sunset>moonrise"
Called on a particular date and time
orbtimes -J 2457957.0 -vv
Called with two stars, solve for location with synthetic sightings
--star Vega --star Arcturus --location="36N90W"
Called with two stars, solve for location with two sightings
--star Vega --star Arcturus --sighting 58.725774 --sighting 61.740039
TBD solve for time and date with two sightings

All Options:
--location (-l) Specify location (latitude, longitude, elevation) e.g. "48.22N 11.54E 0ft"
--query (-q) Specify a query e.g. "sunrise<sunset"
--date (-D) Specify the date yyy-mm-day
--ztime (-Z) Specify the Zulu (UT) time. Use in conjunction with date. e.g. "23:6.1"
--datejd (-J) Specify the Julian day
--timezone (-t) Specify the timezone
--daylight (-d) Specify the daylight savings offset
--twilight_angle (-e) Specify a twilight angle (radians)
--solar_eclipse (-E) Run solar eclipse calculation for probability and time
--selftest (-s) Run self test mode
--verbose (-v) Print more information
--ascii_art (-A) Display option
--map (-m) Specify map (spacechart catalog)
--moon (-M) Display lunar (i.e. Moon) info
--moondays (-N) Display lunar new and full info
--mercury --venus --mars --jupiter --saturn --uranus --neptune (--orbs) Display each planets info (or all) 
--star (-9) Display star celestial (RA.DEC) and topographic (EL.AZ) info for date, time, location and epoch. 
  solve for location given two stars circle of equal position intersect.
  "An analytical solution of the Two Star Sight Problem of Celestial Navigation." Van Allen 1981.
  if no sightings, then guess elevation (EL) angles.
--sighting (-C) Set sighting elevation angle (EL) for respective star. 
--twilight (-T) Display twilight info [0..3] civil,nautical,astronomical,general

$ orbtimes –solar_eclipse
SOLAR_ECLIPSE CALCULATE -E
location is latitude 36.000000 longitude -90.000000 daylight offset 1.000000
Sunset local day Tuesday 19:50.505922 August 11 2026
Sunrise local day Wednesday 6:16.183105 August 12 2026
Check: Solar eclipse possible. MUST be at new moon 46245.468565 == 46245.234619 (12.000000 8.000000 2026.000000)
argument latitude 2.990440 event day 46245.000000 event fraction 0.234619
Check: calculating solar eclipse on date 2026 8 12 and location -90.000000 36.000000
moon_lat 0.151152
eclipse probability 1.000000 at UT time 18.017936

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;

Julian Day Number JD began at 12:00 PM (noon) Universal Time on January 1, 4713 BC. the variable JD is an extended precision floating point number, with the fractional part determining fractions of a day with respect to Universal Time (UT).

// Sunrise Friday   6:2.257904 July 25 2025 (local day)  Julian 2460881.959901 (hours UT=11.037632 )        
// location is latitude 36.000000 longitude -90.000000 daylight offset 1.000000       
    dj = JulianDays(25, 7, 2025);                                                                               
    jd = trueJulianDays(dj);                                                                                    
    icheck = (fabs(jd-2460881.959901)<1.0);                                                                     
                          

/* in our system we work with a modified
julianDay from 1900
*/
extended trueJulianDays(extended jd)
{
return jd + 2415020;
}

A song I heard many times. A song I sung many times. A song I play on the guitar. I believe the song references John 16:33.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

He has overcome the world, and so we can too.