Sunday, July 09, 2023

learned of astronomical clock

Browsing Cloudy Nights, as I am want to do, I saw a new thread about a new feature within Astrospheric.

Now, Astrospheric is already a pretty awesome wx resource. I really like the sinusoidal charts for the Sun and Moon and the temperature line plots for ambient and predicted dew point.

A relatively recent addition was the kp-index row.

Wish it had barometric pressure, but hey...

The CN notification highlighted a new feature, a new graph, available to all users. 

I hopped into my weather portal for St T and clicked the link, tuned for my lat and long. I found the new element at the bottom of the main screen.

I'm a sucker for cool infographics that actually work! Immediately, I liked it! At a glance, a ton of information. And interactive too!

new circular infographic from Astrospheric

It's called the Astronomical Clock.

VERY interesting.

Time dial can be manually set (it is extremely sensitive).

Targets can be added based upon user preference. One can choose from the Messier, NGC, IC, and Abell catalogues. What about comets?! That'd be cool. Didn't seem to work. Well, there was no listing of current comets... But objects could be included with RA and Dec. That'll do.

Then, items in the clever circular chart, could added up top in the sinusoidal. Wow. Impressive. A very handy and easy way to assess visibility night by night, especially when battling the stoopid Moon.

Astrospheric just went up a notch, a big notch!

Note: Tested on 64-bit Windows 10 Home in Chrome 114. Haven't used the mobile app for eons.

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