stars-at-night

Screenshots

This plugin displays data of interest to amateur astronomers. It is calculated from user-provided location and date information. The plugin is called from a WordPress shortcode, and the parameters are specified in the shortcode. The following parameters are required, in any order: lat : Lattitude of location in fractional degrees (e.g. 30.8910). Positive is north, negative is south of equator long : Longitude of location in fractional degrees (e.g.-98.4265). Positive is east, negative is west of the UTC line timezone : Timezone name, must be value recognized by PHP. See http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php These parameters are optional: name : The name of the location to be calculated days : The number of days of data to display. Must be a value from 1 to 10. Defaults to 3 if not specified. Shortcode Examples: stars-at-night name=Chennai lat=13.08 long=80.26 timezone=Asia/Kolkata days=1 stars-at-night name=”COE Observing Field” lat=30.891 long=-97.4265 timezone=America/Chicago days=10 The output consists of simple HTML tables: Sun/Moon table: The times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, morning astronomical twilight, and evening astronomical twilight for the specified days (max 10 days). Planets table: The times and visibility for the planets, for the current day. ISS table: The times and directions for visible ISS passes over the specified days (max 10 days). Iridium flares table: The times and directions for visible Iridium flares over the specified days (max 7 days). You can view the plugin in action here: http://notforlong.org/stars-at-night Credits and Acknowledgements: Lunar images by Dan Morgan. Used with permission. http://DanMorgan.org. WordPress framework and sunrise/sunset algorithm: https://github.com/bengreeley/sunrisesunset Moonrise and Moonset class (with a correction for timezone): http://dxprog.com/entry/calculate-moon-rise-and-set-in-php Moon phase class: https://github.com/solarissmoke/php-moon-phase Planetary, ISS and Iridium Flare tables are obtained by sending GET requests to: http://heavens-above.com (HTTP API used with permission) Contributors stleary