This is a “nit” I realize, but I thought I’d point it out.
It seems to me that the moon set times for several sites I have visited are confusing.
When the moon sets after midnight, the time is actually as of today. This is pretty much
useless for astronomers - without adjustment. We are concerned with what time the moon
will set this evening, not the evening that is already over. The charts astronomers use elsewhere
on the net take this into account.
Why do we care about moon set? During periods of moonlight visual astronomy is made more
difficult. Contrast on Deep Sky Objects is badly affected. Most astro-imagers only shoot images
in periods of no moon light.
The second set of variables affecting seeing are related to the atmosphere - the weather.
While our weather sites do a good job describing this in terms useful for everyday living,
a much clearer prediction of seeing conditions can be found by using a tool such as ClearSkyClock. http://cleardarksky.com/c/SnJsFLkey.html?1 is the site near me. The charts are available for linking
for many locations worldwide. Want to draw astronomers in to your site? This will help. As will water
vapor image loops, and upper air wind flows.
Put up a content like this…then contact your local astro club that you have a one stop shop for them,
and they will come!
Thanks for all you do for us astronomers…we are kindred spirits in a lot of ways! Which is to say we’re nuts
It would be nice to see a php code that we could use on our websites, for anyone that was interested.
I for one would like to see this become available soon.
Thanks for the suggestion, and I agree that the date (not just the time) of the moonrise/set are important.
We’ll have to suggest to Brian that WD change (or add tags that include the date+time to WD), then the template can report that instead. Currently, we just present what WD puts in %moonrise% and %moonset% tags which are times only.
It’s unfortunate that the Clear Dark Sky forecasts are only available for North America as I would have liked to have have added that to my own page.
However, I found another one which is free, allows you to hotlink to the forecast image and produces a forecast by your Lat & Long or you can search through the Country, County & Town menu.
Here’s the link: http://7timer.y234.cn/V3/product.php?language=en&product_id=1
The image takes a bit of time to download as they’re quite large PNG images and I’m making up a legend for them which I’ll post on here once complete.
Yours is taking a long time Simon, mine came up within about 20 seconds.
I tried the one for Northampton as well and that took ages (well I actually gave up before it loaded :lol:).
Now mine isn’t loading either so maybe we’re overloading his server or something?
Oh well, off to find another one then. #-o
$moonrisedate = '05/04/09'; // moon rise date
$moonrise = '3:55 PM'; // moon rise time
$moonsetdate = '05/04/09'; // moon set date
$moonset = '3:31 AM'; // moon set time
$moonage = 'Moon age: 9 days,19 hours,19 minutes,75%'; // current age of the moon (days since new moon)
$moonphase = '75%'; // Moon phase %
$moonphasename = 'Waxing Gibbous Moon'; // 10.36z addition
And the US Naval Observatory shows
U.S. Naval Observatory
Astronomical Applications Department
Sun and Moon Data for One Day
The following information is provided for Saratoga, Santa Clara County, California (longitude W122.0, latitude N37.3):
Monday
4 May 2009 Pacific Daylight Time
SUN
Begin civil twilight 5:41 a.m.
Sunrise 6:10 a.m.
Sun transit 1:05 p.m.
Sunset 8:01 p.m.
End civil twilight 8:29 p.m.
MOON
Moonrise 2:46 p.m. on preceding day
Moonset 3:30 a.m.
Moonrise 3:52 p.m.
Moon transit 9:59 p.m.
Moonset 3:57 a.m. on following day
Phase of the Moon on 4 May: waxing gibbous with 80% of the Moon’s visible disk illuminated.
First quarter Moon on 1 May 2009 at 1:44 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
