Astro_Woodland_Galaxy_Andromeda

Woodlands Galaxy Night-Sky — Andromeda Observatory

A single-file web app for planning the Friday-night stargazing sessions at the Andromeda Observatory, Woodlands Galaxy Community Club, Singapore (31 Woodlands Avenue 6, 1.43901° N, 103.80266° E). Everything — Moon, planets, deep-sky target altitudes, sky map, sunset/twilight times — is computed on-device, so the page works offline; only the live weather forecast needs a connection.

Adapted from the SCOB Night-Sky Dashboard (Science Centre Observatory) and re-pointed to Woodlands. The original SCOB source is preserved under archive/scob-v3.25-original/.

File to open or host: Woodland_Galaxy.html — the single canonical dashboard.

Site configuration — one file

The observing site now lives in site-config.js (window.SITE_CONFIG): coordinates, venue name, air-quality region, weather-forecast area, session times, social link and the telescope fleet. The shared engine (astro-core.js) and the dashboard read their coordinates and NEA region from it at runtime, so re-pointing to a different observatory is a one-file edit. Static display strings (page titles, the header “location” line) mirror these values in each page’s HTML — keep them in sync.

Features

Date & time planning

Defaults to the next Friday, 8:30 pm SGT, with a live countdown.
Date picker, time picker, drag time slider; ● Now and ↺ Next Fri shortcuts.

Tonight at a glance

One-line go / no-go verdict combining live forecast and sky darkness.
Chips for sunset, fully-dark, sunrise, Moon % and altitude, best planet, and the top deep-sky target now.

Sky map

All-sky “looking up” chart with planets, Moon, Sun, deep-sky targets, constellation stick figures, Milky Way band and tap-to-locate highlighting.

Moon, Solar system, Deep-sky targets

Moon phase/illumination/rise-set with moonlight notes; Sun + seven planets with visibility verdicts; Messier + Caldwell targets ranked by altitude with Moon separation, Bortle-honest verdicts (default Bortle 8, city (Woodlands)), and per-target observing windows. Visual and imaging (Seestar) modes.

Weather — go / no-go

Auto-loading Open-Meteo forecast for the chosen date/time, evening cloud timeline, seeing/transparency (7Timer!), live NEA PSI (North region), MSS rain radar and 2-hr Nowcast (nearest area: Woodlands), plus seasonal monsoon guidance.

Events, satellites, and eyepiece detail

2026–27 special-events calendar, on-device conjunction finder, ISS/Tiangong/Hubble passes with magnitudes, Jupiter/Saturn eyepiece detail (Galilean moons, GRS transits, ring tilt), double & carbon stars, comet tracker, and a printable weekly briefing.

Companion pages

Tonight on the Moon (moon-tonight.html), telescope guide (telescope-types.html), tracking & alignment (tracking-methods.html), docent tour (tonights-tour.html), point-your-phone finder (sky-finder.html), “what am I looking at?” (identify.html), guided audio tour (audio-tour.html), eyepiece/FOV calculator (eyepiece-fov.html), full-screen visitor kiosk (kiosk.html), alignment-star picker (align-stars.html), plan-ahead Friday comparison (plan-ahead.html), daytime/solar mode (solar.html), printable object cards (object-cards.html), setup/pack-down checklist (checklist.html), constellation stories (constellation-story.html), solar-system-to-scale (scale-model.html), highlights social card (highlights-card.html), QR poster (qr-poster.html), sky almanac (almanac.html), constellation quiz (quiz.html), occultation predictor (occultations.html), and the public front-door Sky Guide (sky-guide.html, installable PWA).

App conveniences

Desktop + mobile in one auto-detecting file; night mode (auto after sunset); installable PWA (manifest.webmanifest, sky-guide.webmanifest, sw.js, icons — see INSTALL-as-app.md); accessibility mode; multilingual kiosk & Sky Guide (EN / 中文 / Malay / Tamil).

Telescope fleet — Andromeda Observatory

⚠ PENDING CONFIRMATION. The fleet content (dashboard run-sheet, telescope-types.html, Telescopes-Reference.md, align-stars.html, checklist.html, object-cards.html, eyepiece-fov.html presets) is being updated from the observatory’s real instruments. Until confirmed it carries a placeholder (30 cm dome scope + rooftop portables). Edit SITE_CONFIG.FLEET and the fleet sections once the makes/apertures/mounts are known.

Version history

Version What changed

v1.0 (current) Initial Woodlands Galaxy release, derived from SCOB Night-Sky v3.25. Re-pointed to the Andromeda Observatory, Woodlands Galaxy CC (1.43901 N, 103.80266 E); NEA PSI region West → North; 2-hr forecast area → Woodlands/Sembawang/Yishun; session Fri 7:30–9:30 pm; Bortle label → city (Woodlands). New site-config.js single-source config consumed by the engine at runtime. Full rebrand (SCOB → Woodlands Galaxy) across all pages, manifests, footer and social link (Andromeda Observatory Facebook). CI regression test (test-astro.js) re-verified at the new site. cache → wg-sky-v1. Telescope-fleet content pending observatory confirmation.

Version	What changed
v1.0 (current)	Initial Woodlands Galaxy release, derived from SCOB Night-Sky v3.25. Re-pointed to the Andromeda Observatory, Woodlands Galaxy CC (1.43901 N, 103.80266 E); NEA PSI region West → North; 2-hr forecast area → Woodlands/Sembawang/Yishun; session Fri 7:30–9:30 pm; Bortle label → city (Woodlands). New `site-config.js` single-source config consumed by the engine at runtime. Full rebrand (SCOB → Woodlands Galaxy) across all pages, manifests, footer and social link (Andromeda Observatory Facebook). CI regression test (`test-astro.js`) re-verified at the new site. cache → `wg-sky-v1`. Telescope-fleet content pending observatory confirmation.

Cutting a release

Edit SCOB_VERSION in version.js (footers update automatically).
Bump the CACHE name in sw.js (e.g. wg-sky-v1 → v2) — forces installed PWAs to pull new pages.
Add a row to the version-history table and move the (current) marker.
Run ./check-release.sh — it fails loudly if anything is out of sync.
Upload the changed pages plus sw.js, version.js, site-config.js, and README.md.

Data sources

Deep-sky catalogue: AstroPixels Messier & Caldwell catalogs (F. Espenak) · planetary orbital elements: P. Schlyter · weather: Open-Meteo & MSS weather.gov.sg · seeing/transparency: 7Timer! astro · light-pollution realism: Bortle scale · haze: NEA via data.gov.sg · sky events: Sea & Sky astronomy calendar (seasky.org) · ISS/Tiangong/Hubble orbits: CelesTrak TLEs, propagated with satellite.js · Jupiter/Saturn physical ephemeris: J. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms · GRS longitude: JUPOS trend · lunar feature positions: IAU/USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature · double/carbon star data: WDS & SIMBAD (compiled) · rain radar: MSS weather.gov.sg · Andromeda Observatory, Woodlands Galaxy CC.

Project convention: every page credits its data sources in the footer — keep this when adding new data feeds.