Tide System

This is not a tide-table predictor. The visual shell and chart show relative astronomical tidal forcing from the Moon and Sun at the selected surface point. They do not show predicted water height, and they do not include coastline shape, ocean depth, weather, harbour resonance, datum conversion, or basin sloshing.

1. Left-drag orbits around the current camera target. Right-drag or middle-drag pans. Scroll zooms toward the cursor.
2. Use W, A, S, D or the arrow keys to pan the camera target.
3. Move the day slider to choose the civil date at the selected reference location. Click the chart or scrub the time slider to choose that location's civil time for the astronomical geometry.
4. Side view puts Earth left and the Sun right on the ecliptic plane. Top view looks down on the ecliptic plane.
5. Tide bulge shows outward domes at about ten percent of Earth diameter so the bulges are easy to picture.
6. Tide color map uses an inferno-style scale for dimensionless tidal forcing from -1 to +1. It is not a metre scale.
7. Real scale switches Moon and Sun sizes and distances to the true Earth-radius scale. The default is a readable cartoon scale.
8. The dotted yellow latitude line shows the selected city's daily path around the globe.
9. The Moon tilt toggle exaggerates lunar orbital inclination relative to Earth orbit, making the off-plane motion easier to see.