These tweets about how sometimes the sun doesn't set on the International Space Station for multiple days made me realize I still have trouble visualizing solar beta angles.
Does anyone have a projection of the ISS ground track, with the shadowed/unshadowed bits of Earth, during a high beta angle time? Or perhaps an animation?
The tweets in question:
@ISSarchaeology at 3:16 PM CDT - 20 May 2018
ISS Archaeology Retweeted Ed Van Cise
Another interesting similarity between life on a space station and life in Antarctica (often used as an analog for reasons of isolation and confinement): sometimes the sun doesn't set.
and
Ed Van Cise (@Carbon_Flight) at 3:13 PM - 20 May 2018
A couple of times a year our orbit line precesses to align with the solar terminator. When that happens, the sun appears off our port or starboard side and never sets. This lasts for 3-4 days and puts significant thermal stress on the spacecraft (constant heat or constant cold).