The Stars at Night

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

You can also display the individual data tables via more specific shortcodes:

• stars-at-night-sun-moon name=”Mount Kilimanjaro” lat=-2.55 long=37.55 timezone=Africa/Nairobi
• stars-at-night-planets name=”Ushuaia” lat=-54.8 long=-68.33 timezone=America/Argentina/Ushuaia
• stars-at-night-iss name=”Mount Burnett Observatory” lat=-37.9 long=145.4 timezone=Australia/Melbourne days=7

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).
• (REMOVED) 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://johnjleary.com/notforlong

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)
• Per-table shortcodes implemented by Peter Lieverdink

Contributors

stleary Peter Lieverdink