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I heard this story, where they celebrated the birthday of the now defunct North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung in the 1970s and as a birthday present they created through some very complex artillery maneuvers an artificial total solar eclipse over Pyongyang. At that very moment, the dictator stepped out of his palace, in front of the crowd in a suit covered with reflecting material and had giant reflectors directed at him, so he practically 'outshone' the sun... While this seems plausible in view of the megalomania and extreme personality cult we all know about, I still wonder whether that is technically feasible. (I'm not looking for an answer whether the story is true or not.)

So my question is whether there is any possibility to have an artificial, man-made total solar eclipse and if so, how?

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There's a total eclipse of the Sun every night. – Keith Thompson May 21 '12 at 2:54

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It would be very hard to reduce the sense of daylight at the Earths surface as light reaching any point could have been scattered bby the atmosphere over a large angle. This rules out just covering the couple of square degrees the sun extends over.

Solar eclipses get much darker because the light is blocked before it reaches our atmosphere and can not be scattered over a large angle. Even on a cloudy day look up and see how uniform the illumination appears practically from horizon to horizon...

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up vote 7 down vote

I think you are confusing Kim Jong-il and Pyongyang with C. Montgomery Burns and Springfield. Apart from that, your recollection is correct.

enter image description here

In fact, the sun is extremely large and it would take an object the size of the moon to totally block out its light. This is what happens during a real solar eclipse.

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+1 LOOOOOOOL :D – Count Zero Jan 7 '12 at 20:07
This is a gem, but unfortunately falls short of providing an actual answer; it would be awesome if you could expand your input to provide one in order to aid this post's longevity. – Mr. Disappointment Jan 7 '12 at 21:38
@Mr.Disappointment: I'd love to keep it! I shared a link to this on another SE site. I was also looking for some info on the historical background of the story... But it seems it's just an invention. :) – Count Zero Jan 7 '12 at 23:13
I've added a brief, but hopefully illuminating, explanation of why this is infeasible in practice. – RoundTower Jan 8 '12 at 1:00
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"it would take an object the size of the moon to totally block out its light" is not entirely true. At the distance of the moon, it would indeed take an object the moons size. At half the distance, it would take half the size object (in diameter). If the blocking object is extremely close to the earth's surface, It would need to be much smaller. A large dense cloud can often block the sun completely. However atmosphere scattering would probably not make it completely dark. – Jus12 Jan 13 '12 at 9:15
up vote 4 down vote

In order to get anything remotely appearing like an eclipse, it would need to be above the atmosphere, in order to darken the sky. According to the wikipedia article:

At the altitude of the International Space Station, for example, an object would need to be about 3.35 km (2.08 mi) across to blot the Sun out entirely.

And while that would technically be an eclipse, and the corona of the sun would probably be visible, it's only really going to have a small part of the effect. Essentially, the entire horizon would need to be covered. I don't have an exact number, but let's just say that 50 miles would be required. Essentially, take that 2 mile disc from the previous point, and add it all the way around. A 50 mile disc in orbit at the altitude of the ISS should provide a 1 second eclipse for someone on the ground, if they know exactly where to look for it;-)

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Yes, it could be made out of aluminum foil or something quite light. – anna v May 21 '12 at 4:07
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Good try, but such an object in the space station's orbit would be moving pretty fast so the eclipse wouldn't last long. I guess you could make a retrograde orbit that would roughly stay under the sun, and it would have to have sufficient inclination to bring it up to the latitude of Pyongyang. That would be quite a project. – Mike Dunlavey May 21 '12 at 4:40
@MikeDunlavey: The point is, it could be done. It might take a huge solar sail type device, but... I'll give you, the speed would be extremely quick, so... – PearsonArtPhoto May 21 '12 at 4:44
up vote 1 down vote

It wouldn't be practical to create a big enough 'object' to occlude the Sun over any very big area.

So I would suspect either:

1) It was very localized. E.g. only positioned correctly for viewers right in front of the palace, say using a balloon.

2) Maybe they just filled sky with smoke/vapor. This wouldn't be much of an 'eclipse' in the sense intended, but the effect would be close enough for the uneducated. This might work over a somewhat bigger area.

3) The entire story is apocryphal.

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Re Idea 2: This is North Korea we're talking about, after all. – Andrew Jan 7 '12 at 17:48

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