Rishi's Stargazing Guide

A personal digital observatory built with Next.js: an interactive sky map, ISS tracking, moon phase, satellite TLE fetching, comet elements, and lightweight star/object lookups. It is designed to be fast to run locally and easy to extend.

What you can do

• Explore an interactive sky map and star field
• Track the ISS position and estimate upcoming passes
• Browse satellite TLE groups (visual, stations, Starlink)
• Pull comet orbital elements (MPC CometEls)
• Resolve sky coordinates to an object via SIMBAD
• Fetch short Wikipedia summaries for stars/planets/DSOs

Pages

• / Main dashboard
• /skymap Sky map view
• /stargazing Stargazing conditions and guides
• /stellarium Embedded Stellarium Web
• /stellarium-sky Stellarium sky view

API routes

All routes are implemented as Next.js Route Handlers under app/api/.

• GET /api/iss-position
  • Returns current ISS position (via wheretheiss.at) in an open-notify compatible shape.
• GET /api/iss-pass?lat=<number>&lon=<number>&n=<number>
  • Returns approximate upcoming ISS pass times for a location.
• GET /api/satellites?group=visual|stations|starlink
  • Returns parsed TLEs from Celestrak with conservative caching.
• GET /api/comets?limit=<number>
  • Returns a bounded list of comets parsed from MPC CometEls.txt.
• GET /api/star-resolve?ra=<deg>&dec=<deg>
  • Resolves coordinates via SIMBAD and returns identifiers and best name.
• GET /api/wiki-summary?q=<query>&kind=star|planet|comet|dso|nebula
  • Returns a summary extract/thumbnail/url from Wikipedia.

Tech stack

• Next.js (App Router) + React + TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS
• React Query for data fetching/caching
• Three.js / React Three Fiber for 3D visuals
• Leaflet / React Leaflet for maps

Getting started

Prereqs: Node.js 18+ and npm.

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

Production build

npm run build
npm run start

Configuration (optional)

This project mostly relies on public upstream data sources. There is an example env file at .env.local.example.

• NASA_API_KEY is currently only used by a placeholder hook in hooks/useAstronomyData.ts.

Data and accuracy notes

• Data sources: DATA_SOURCES.md
• Accuracy notes and caveats: DATA_ACCURACY.md

License

No license is currently specified. If you intend others to use or contribute, add a license file.