barionleg / yoursky

Web pages, source code, databases, and resources for Fourmilab's Your Sky Web resource, which produces custom sky maps, horizon views, and virtual telescope images for any location on Earth, date, and time. much moore to explore on R_wiki [RepoWiki]] ...

Your Sky — Custom Star Maps

Your Sky is a Web-based interactive resource available on the Fourmilab.ch site since 1998 which makes custom maps of the sky for any location on Earth and any date from 4713 B.C. into the distant future. Maps can include stars as faint as magnitude 6.5, constellation names, outlines, and boundaries, the Moon and planets, deep sky objects from a database of more than 500, and a comet or asteroid whose position is calculated from its orbital elements. A variety of display options allow customising the map for its intended use. All-sky maps or horizon views can be generated, as well as images from a “virtual telescope” aimed anywhere in the sky.

This repository maintains the master copies of the Your Sky Web pages, the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs (written in C) which process user requests and generate the star map images, and utilities which download and update databases of comets and asteroids from publicly-available sources.

Structure of the repository

This repository is organised into the following directories.

• webtree: Replica of the Web tree from the Fourmilab site containing all of the HTML documents, images, and downloads. These pages contain relative references to style sheets, icons, and other resources on the Fourmilab Web site and will not display properly without modification in other environments.

• src: Source code for the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs that generate the sky maps and response pages for requests made from the Web pages.

• cgi: Resources used by the CGI programs built in the src directory including icons and fixed HTML epilogues for results returned.

• cron: Utilities to download current databases of comets and asteroids from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and update the tables used by Your Sky to track and plot the position of objects on sky maps.

Web resources

• Your Sky