About skycrate

skycrate is a live astronomy dashboard. Every card refreshes itself from public data and standard astronomical calculations — no editorial judgment, just physics and data for wherever you are.

Where the data comes from

• Planets, moon phase, sun/twilight times — calculated locally with the Astronomy Engine library, accurate to a few arcseconds. No API needed.
• ISS passes — orbital data from CelesTrak, used to find passes where the station is both sunlit and above your horizon while your sky is actually dark.
• Aurora forecast — NOAA's planetary K-index and short-term aurora model, combined with your location's geomagnetic latitude.
• Cloud cover & sky visibility — Open-Meteo's forecast, combined with how much moonlight will wash out the sky.
• Meteor showers — a curated calendar of the year's major showers, from the International Meteor Organization.
• Location search — Open-Meteo's geocoding API. Your location stays in your browser, never on our servers.
• Space news — RSS feeds from NASA, ESA, and other outlets, refreshed every 30 minutes, shown as published.
• "Ask what tonight's good for" — an optional, on-demand summary from Google's Gemini, built only from the data already on the dashboard. It never runs unless you click it.

How Sky Visibility is scored

The 0–100 score starts at 100 minus tonight's average cloud cover, then loses points for a bright moon (it washes out fainter objects) and for very high humidity (haze/fog risk). It's a heuristic — always check the actual sky before heading out.

Accuracy & limitations

Planet positions, moon phase, and rise/set times are highly precise. Forecasts — weather, aurora — get less certain the further out they look, so treat them as guidance, not certainty.

Handy tools from toolcrate

A few free tools from our sister site that pair well with skycrate:

• World Clock — compare the current time across cities before planning a call around tonight's viewing window.
• Timezone Difference Calculator — work out the offset if you're coordinating a skywatch with someone elsewhere.
• Coordinate Converter — convert decimal-degree coordinates to DMS, or find the distance between two points.