88 points by delphidolphin4 days ago | 28 comments
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Are there API's that provide simple information on if it's a good night for astronomy? I am totally blind, but would like to know when it's a good night for my kids to use there telescope. I don't use a Mac as my primary machine, and xasteria is not accessible.
Impressive looking app! But I’d argue something like this doesn’t really belong in the Mac menu bar. The last thing most of us need is even more clutter in that space.
It’s a shame because years ago macOS had the perfect place for “quick information at a glance” apps: the Dashboard. But the Dashboard got killed off in mysterious circumstances, and I still miss it!
I had hopes that something like Dashboard would make a comeback with the advent of the new widgets framework, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Widgets can only be buried in Notification Centre (where they get lost and forgotten, buried under all the notifications) or on the desktop (same, plus needless clutter).
I've made some updates as a result to make the app more accessible following feedback from jareds, with improved support for different text sizes, voiceover, and keyboard navigation.
I've also added wider coverage for dark sky spots, aurora alerts, and the nearest clear sky following the reply from robotmay.
Thank you all so much again, and please let me know if you'd like to see any more features!
Also a big shout out to Dan the moderator - thank you for all your help!
Wow, nicely done. Especially the ability define a custom horizon. In my backyard, I have neighbor trees all around blocking a huge portion of the sky, plus the back wall of my house (too many street lamps in my front to observe). I'd love to give this a go, but I don't have a mac. Any planned support for PC?
Southern Dales is a good spot for this kind of app, though. Dark skies but famously unreliable cloud. We used to run a small campsite business near Skipton, and guests would ask every afternoon whether tonight would be clear. A menu-bar nudge beats checking three weather sites.
Worked in Reading in the late 90s where "the north" started somewhere around Oxford. Moved to Manchester and never lived it down. Clear Outside has done the cloud and seeing forecast for years, but having it in the menu bar instead of another tab is the right call.
This is fun! Something slightly more broad, capturing golden & blue hour on either side of the day, would be really handy for me as a photographer. The number of times I've just been sat inside whilst an amazing sunset happens outside, and vice-versa where I've gone out to photograph some mountains and the sun goes behind the clouds just as the light starts, are numerous.
The biggest problem I found with weather forecasting is that most people want to know whether it's cloudy/raining overhead. I want to know if it's cloudy and raining somewhere near the horizon :D
Thank you so much. I guess Nightwatch does some of what you're looking for, and the Dark Skies page under the All Targets button does offer alternative sites within driving distance. What I'd not thought of until I read your feedback is perhaps a function that looks for the nearest site with better conditions automatically - that might be my next feature!
Nearest-site-with-better-conditions means a weather API call per candidate site, per refresh. Cache it hard and decide now what the menu bar shows when the API rate-limits you or times out. Stale "tonight is clear" at 11pm is worse than nothing.
This is a great usecase for someone who likes photography. However I would have this as one of my tasks for my personal agent to check and alert me on time. I already have too many things on my menu bar.
I think you may be right in the fact that personal agents will probably take over these types of use cases. Nightwatch was a bit of a labour of love for me to tackle a simple need because clear nights in the UK are a bit of a luxury!
Nice one mate! You’ve included many things and perhaps you should consider making it a full desktop app (or even better web app). Thanks for sharing and extra like for being a DWARFLAB owner :-)
Thank you - the Dwarf Mini actually rekindled this hobby for me. Since developing Nightwatch I realised there's actually a lot more accessible apps out there than I realised. I'm not sure which direction to go with it yet, as the clear skies notification was my immediate use case. If people like it I'll definitely look at building out a roadmap.
If you are interested in smart scopes and don’t mind missing direct observation, the Seestars or Dwarf 3 mini are getting pretty affordable (I borrowed a Dwarf to observe the solar eclipse - it came with solar filter - and playing around with it at night was very happy and got me into the hobby pretty deep so far…)
If you want a real scope after the binoculars, get a 6 or 8 inch Dobsonian. We bought a cheap tabletop one first and regretted it: wobbly mount, tiny aperture. A Dob is just a big mirror on a lazy susan, so there's no setup, and Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons show up the first night. Grab a red flashlight too.
This question has a ton of varied answers across the internet. The best bang for your buck is a good set of binoculars and a tripod for them. It's really neat how much you can see with just those... clearing up fuzzy spots with naked eyes by revealing clusters of stars.
From there, if you have found out that you enjoy being outside using the binoculars, can see what you expected... then buy a compact scope
I have two sets of cheap (<$100) binoculars, a cheap refractor from amazon (gskyer, $300), a very nice celestron c8 and a small meade MCT. I bought them in that order as I developed my interests. I use two different eye pieces, both plossals, one with about an inch of eye relief with no eyecup and one with a bit less relief and an eyecup. I use the binoculars more than all the others combined and if I were starting over I would buy a really nice set with a tripod.
For planets and nebulae I use the c8 with an equitorial mount. This is _fantastic_ for general objects in the night sky since once it's aligned it's a single knob to turn to keep up with things as the earth is rotating. For the moon and large planets and tracking things like space craft launching or starlink sats I use the refractor with the standard azimuth tripod. It makes it very easy to manually "point and shoot" objects with irregular travel paths.
I've been using the 7Timer astro feed for a while, and the gotcha is that the cloud cover is a coarse 1-9 scale on a 3-hour grid. A "clear" night can still mean a thin band of cirrus sneaks in around 1am. Seeing and transparency are the numbers I'd watch for planets. Cloud cover alone oversells it.
