View stars, planets, and more, right in your terminal!
Clone this repo in your local system and enter on of the project directories.
Initialize the builder:
meson setup build
To rebuild from then on from within the newly created ../build/ directory:
meson compile
To install to default location (this may require sudo privileges):
meson install
Note, after rebuilding any changes, rerunning meson install is required
- Ncurses detection is spotty on some systems, and you may need to install pkg-config in order for Meson to find it
- Many unicode characters will not render (at all) on macOS
- The Moon's phase is currently not correct
- Azimuthal grid drawing needs improvement
- Only a few constellation figures are currently available
After installing starsaver, simply run starsaver to invoke it.
starsaver
Pressing ESC will exit.
Say we wanted to view the sky at 5:00 AM on July 16, 1969—the morning of the Apollo 11 launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We would run:
starsaver --latitude 28.573469 --longitude -80.651070 --datetime 1969-7-16T9:32:00
If we then wanted to display all stars with a magnitude brighter than or equal
to 5.0 and add color, we would add --threshold 5.0 --color as options.
If you simply want the current time, don't specify the --datetime option and
starsaver will use the system time. For your current location, you will still
have to specify the --lat and --long options.
For more options and help run starsaver -h or starsaver --help
ℹ️ Use a tool like https://www.latlong.net/ to get your latitude and longitude
ℹ️ Star magnitudes decrease as apparent brightness increases
- Stars: Yale Bright Star Catalog
- Star names: IAU Star Names
- Constellation figures: Stellarium
- Planet orbital elements: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Planet magnitudes: Computing Apparent Planetary Magnitudes for The Astronomical Almanac