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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
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- causal 3y agoLooks 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nsriv 3y agoThe very next screen after the modal allows you to change your location or use device location, upon which the Chrome permissions modal fires.
- sshh12 3y agoYup! Totally understand people might not want to share their location, so if you "skip" I just put you in LA.
- pvg 3y agoI just put you in LA. That should probably be 'I just put you in LA and only make the moon visible'
- sshh12 3y agoHaha yeah you are stuck in Bortle 9 until you fixed it
- modeless 3y agoIP geolocation works surprisingly well for most people. It'll be a better default than any fixed location.
- causal 3y agoYeah my mistake, didn't see the skip button.
- nlunbeck 3y agoLooks incredible! Shows the value of a good onboarding -- really had me excited to see everything the app had to offer
- sshh12 3y agoThanks! This is the first time I invested in building any sort of onboarding seems like it's definitely changed reception
- 6footgeek 3y agoThis is great! I usually use https://telescopius.com/ https://telescopius.com/ but this has just made it onto my bookmarks, well done!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sshh12 3y agoOh wow that's also great
- abroadwin 3y agoCan't get past the location setup. I click "use device location", authorize it in the browser, click save, and nothing happens.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- richrichardsson 3y agoSame. Google Chrome, macOS Sonoma.
- sshh12 3y agoSorry y'all, it's the hug of death right now. Way underestimated the traffic this would get.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoFun 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/ https://astro.build/
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- sshh12 3y agoGood idea!
- pkage 3y agoLooks great! This is super cool. Where do you source your information for object locations?
- sshh12 3y agoThanks! When people search for objects, I import the data from SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Also just a lot of manual bootstrapping.
- samstave 3y agoHow about an alert for when [thing] is going to be above your house?
- modeless 3y agoMy site has this but only for satellites. https://james.darpinian.com/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.
- azangru 3y ago> Uncaught Error: Minified React error #425; visit https://reactjs.org/docs/error-decoder.html?invariant=425 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/ https://sshh12--astro-app-backend.modal.run/' from origin 'https://astro.sshh.io https://astro.sshh.io' has been blocked by CORS policy I think something... doesn't look right.
- sshh12 3y agoI think this might be due to load unfortunately.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jsf01 3y agoMy 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 3y agoThese 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 3y agoLooks nice! Where does the weather forecast data come from? I've used Clear Sky Charts (https://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/ 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 3y agoYup, just manually type your location in that window. Weather is coming (at least for now) from https://open-meteo.com/ https://open-meteo.com/
- endigma 3y agoShould disambiguate from https://astro.build/ 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.
- jcurbo 3y agoI 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 3y agoThis 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 3y agoThreeJS. You can checkout the code here https://github.com/sshh12/astro-app/blob/main/app/components/sky-chart-3d.js https://github.com/sshh12/astro-app/blob/main/app/components... Was actually a lot easier to build this UI than I expected.
- solardev 3y agoHey 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/ https://astro.build/
- dandigangi 3y agoHeh, thought the same thing when I popped it open.
- sshh12 3y agoAm I able to change the name? Thought that was mod only
- cglong 3y agoPretty sure OP can change the name for a limited time. That's probably expired by now unfortunately
- pimlottc 3y agoFastest way is to use the contact us link at the bottom of the page
- jcoder 3y agoBut the app is literally called “Astro App”
- solardev 3y agoThat's gonna be hard to find on SEO :/
- guptarohit 3y agoThis. At first glance from title of this submission I thought it's an astrology app.
- sdwrj 3y agoI almost did the exact same
- jdsleppy 3y agoYou almost perfectly recreated the styling of Astro Space UX Design System https://www.astrouxds.com/ https://www.astrouxds.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sshh12 3y agoOh wow. This is all https://www.tremor.so/ https://www.tremor.so/ dark mode.
- edmundsauto 3y agoThis could be a cool application in VR - have you thought about publishing a version for AVP or Quest?
- sshh12 3y agoNope but that could be interesting
- extraduder_ire 3y agoDon't know if AVP has webxr support, but that'd be a good way to get it onto quest and other existing VR devices quickly. There's already some demos out there focusing on putting three.js views into VR. Using passthrough to align the direction and angle would be cool too, by lining up the moon/horizon through the camera or something.
- BillSaysThis 3y agoMaybe just my aging eyes but the warning to HN visitors of grey text on black background is HIGHLY unreadable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stevage 3y agoNeeds to automatically detect timezone.
- sshh12 3y agoIt does if you select use device location
- bbor 3y agoYour app is awesome and I'm looking forward to playing with it when it's not being hugged to death :). That said I would definitely suggest reading some design books or taking an online class - the app is obviously beautiful but IMO violates some traditional design principles, namely consistency issues like "buttons should be rounded and CTA-colored and small, all clickable elements should share a motif", etc. I recommend Donald Norman, specifically. Again, awesome app. Windy.app blew me away (no pun intended), and I think this is a logical next step.
- Arech 3y agoCool...probably... But am I the only one who can't read gray text on a gray background? I can't get past it...