[HN Gopher] Show HN: Astro App
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Show HN: Astro App
I really like Stellarium and SkySafari but I felt like these are
primarily geared towards exploring the sky but not so much "here
are the long list of things I want to see, when can I see them
tonight and where". There's also not really a great option I've
found that combines sky object planning + location weather details
while still being free so I built this. The UI's heavily inspired
by NINAs sky atlas + Robinhood. Right now you can: View the
altitude chart of objects and 3D view Create lists of objects of
interest View the annual max/min daily altitude of an object to
find the best time of year to view See live clouds from GOES
satellite view + weekly night-centric forecast
Author : sshh12
Score : 207 points
Date : 2024-03-04 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (astro.sshh.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (astro.sshh.io)
| causal wrote:
| Looks like the only way to use it is giving location permission?
| Was excited to try it but probably won't until there is a postal
| code option.
| nsriv wrote:
| The very next screen after the modal allows you to change your
| location or use device location, upon which the Chrome
| permissions modal fires.
| sshh12 wrote:
| Yup! Totally understand people might not want to share their
| location, so if you "skip" I just put you in LA.
| pvg wrote:
| _I just put you in LA._
|
| That should probably be 'I just put you in LA and only make
| the moon visible'
| sshh12 wrote:
| Haha yeah you are stuck in Bortle 9 until you fixed it
| modeless wrote:
| IP geolocation works surprisingly well for most people.
| It'll be a better default than any fixed location.
| causal wrote:
| Yeah my mistake, didn't see the skip button.
| nlunbeck wrote:
| Looks incredible! Shows the value of a good onboarding -- really
| had me excited to see everything the app had to offer
| sshh12 wrote:
| Thanks! This is the first time I invested in building any sort
| of onboarding seems like it's definitely changed reception
| 6footgeek wrote:
| This is great! I usually use https://telescopius.com/ but this
| has just made it onto my bookmarks, well done!
| sshh12 wrote:
| Oh wow that's also great
| abroadwin wrote:
| Can't get past the location setup. I click "use device location",
| authorize it in the browser, click save, and nothing happens.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Same. Google Chrome, macOS Sonoma.
| sshh12 wrote:
| Sorry y'all, it's the hug of death right now. Way
| underestimated the traffic this would get.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Fun stuff.
|
| Maybe work words like "sky" "explorer" etc into the title
| tho..... This being HN I thought maybe this had something to do
| with https://astro.build/
| sshh12 wrote:
| Good idea!
| pkage wrote:
| Looks great! This is super cool. Where do you source your
| information for object locations?
| sshh12 wrote:
| Thanks! When people search for objects, I import the data from
| SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Also just a lot of manual
| bootstrapping.
| samstave wrote:
| How about an alert for when [thing] is going to be above your
| house?
| modeless wrote:
| My site has this but only for satellites.
| https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ For OP I'd suggest
| doing calendar events for notifications rather than Web Push.
| Web Push is very difficult to set up, users are understandably
| suspicious of it, and it doesn't guarantee timely delivery on
| Android devices. Calendar events work well on mobile and don't
| require any permissions.
| sshh12 wrote:
| Thanks!
| azangru wrote:
| > Uncaught Error: Minified React error #425; visit
| https://reactjs.org/docs/error-decoder.html?invariant=425 for the
| full message or use the non-minified dev environment
|
| > Access to fetch at 'https://sshh12--astro-app-
| backend.modal.run/' from origin 'https://astro.sshh.io' has been
| blocked by CORS policy
|
| I think something... doesn't look right.
| sshh12 wrote:
| I think this might be due to load unfortunately.
| jsf01 wrote:
| My current setup is Stellarium + Clear Outside + windy.app and
| with that you really do need to know ahead of time which objects
| are visible for your particular location at that time of year or
| spend a while browsing. Your app looks amazing for my main use
| cases, but still lacks some information that I rely on. First, it
| is useful to know the direction of the cloud coverage throughout
| the night to be able to compare it with where the object you're
| shooting will be. I also like to know the brightness (magnitude)
| of each object to help with planning. The last thing would be to
| get a list of recommendations rather than using lists of
| favorites. "What deep sky object do I not know about that today
| would be perfect for shooting?" is a question I have only been
| able to answer well with the ASIAR's list of suggestions,
| manually curated calendars online that are not tuned to my
| location, or social media. It seems like you might have all the
| data to do a better job than all of those options in answering
| that question. Super cool app! Excited to see where it goes.
| sshh12 wrote:
| These are great ideas for me to add! - know the direction of
| the cloud coverage throughout the night to be able to compare
| it with where the object you're shooting will be - I also like
| to know the brightness (magnitude) of each object to help with
| planning - The last thing would be to get a list of
| recommendations rather than using lists of favorites. "What
| deep sky object do I not know about that today would be perfect
| for shooting?"
| nullhole wrote:
| Looks nice!
|
| Where does the weather forecast data come from? I've used Clear
| Sky Charts (https://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/) in the past.
|
| Edit: scratch this question, it was addressed below: Also, is
| there a way to manually enter lat/lon/elevation? I poked around
| but it seems to want device location.
| sshh12 wrote:
| Yup, just manually type your location in that window.
|
| Weather is coming (at least for now) from https://open-
| meteo.com/
| endigma wrote:
| Should disambiguate from https://astro.build/ and various other
| name collissions in your title somehow, maybe "Astro App |
| Explore the Night Sky" ?
|
| Also the "Identifiers" section and some other things have
| extremely low contrast text, 2.35:1 instead of the recommended
| 4.5:1 for body-size text. You can check on issues like this using
| the accessibility tab in Firefox or Lighthouse in Chrome.
| sshh12 wrote:
| Good call!
| endigma wrote:
| I also added a bit about accessible text contrast
| jcurbo wrote:
| I just want to pour one out for CalSky, that was a great page for
| setting up custom trackers for lots of astronomical things. It
| was very old school web too (for better or worse).
| RobCodeSlayer wrote:
| This is awesome! I'm curious what you used to make the 3D view?
| I've been trying to make something similar to control my
| telescope
| sshh12 wrote:
| ThreeJS. You can checkout the code here
| https://github.com/sshh12/astro-app/blob/main/app/components...
|
| Was actually a lot easier to build this UI than I expected.
| solardev wrote:
| Hey OP (or a mod?), can we consider editing the title to say
| "Astronomy App" instead of "Astro App?"
|
| I accidentally skipped this at first because I thought it was
| just somebody's personal page built in the Astro JS framework:
| https://astro.build/
| dandigangi wrote:
| Heh, thought the same thing when I popped it open.
| sshh12 wrote:
| Am I able to change the name? Thought that was mod only
| cglong wrote:
| Pretty sure OP can change the name for a limited time. That's
| probably expired by now unfortunately
| pimlottc wrote:
| Fastest way is to use the contact us link at the bottom of the
| page
| jcoder wrote:
| But the app is literally called "Astro App"
| solardev wrote:
| That's gonna be hard to find on SEO :/
| guptarohit wrote:
| This. At first glance from title of this submission I thought
| it's an astrology app.
| sdwrj wrote:
| I almost did the exact same
| pvg wrote:
| HN titles don't need to be completely unambiguous or self-
| explanatory, it's ok to have to click on a thing to figure out
| what it is.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| solardev wrote:
| It's not a matter of blindly following the rules, just that a
| homebrewed astronomy app is a lot more interesting than yet
| another implementation of yet another JS framework. The
| ambiguity is doing a disservice to the cool thing the OP
| actually built, and I think this thread deserves more
| attention.
| pvg wrote:
| The point of these mod comments is not that they are
| 'rules', it's that a bit of ambiguity is good for
| curiosity. The thread itself has about as much attention as
| HN can give a post:
|
| https://hnrankings.info/39591529/
| solardev wrote:
| It's an interesting point... that ambiguous titles can
| help spark curiosity and lure people in.
|
| I wonder, has that ever been tested/looked at somewhat
| scientifically?
| pvg wrote:
| No idea (it's hard for me to imagine how to even design
| such an experiment but I'm no curiosity scientist)
| although HN's weird title rules are probably the thing
| (out of the various weird rules) that the HN hive mind
| has expended the most thinker bees on. So if nothing
| else, they're HN-tested!
| jdsleppy wrote:
| You almost perfectly recreated the styling of Astro Space UX
| Design System https://www.astrouxds.com/
| sshh12 wrote:
| Oh wow. This is all https://www.tremor.so/ dark mode.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| This could be a cool application in VR - have you thought about
| publishing a version for AVP or Quest?
| sshh12 wrote:
| Nope but that could be interesting
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| Maybe just my aging eyes but the warning to HN visitors of grey
| text on black background is HIGHLY unreadable.
| stevage wrote:
| Needs to automatically detect timezone.
| sshh12 wrote:
| It does if you select use device location
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(page generated 2024-03-04 23:00 UTC)