IdeaSift

Astronomy users lack flexible tools for finding specialized sky events

Astronomy enthusiasts and researchers want to calculate less-common events such as eclipses, coincident moon and sun rise/set times, and planetary transits. The available tools they know about do not always support the calculations they need; for one date-search task, a user says the alternative is processing data in a spreadsheet. The requests range from simple event lookups to custom ephemeris analysis, so a useful product would need clearly defined supported calculations and data formats.

For astronomy enthusiasts and researchers. Mentioned from Apr 2024 to Aug 2026 on Bluesky and Stack Exchange.

4 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.

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2 mentions in the last 12 weeks
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What people said

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  1. A software for calculating positions of planets (and other astronomical bodies) using user-provided ephemeris files, like JPL Development Ephemeris or VSOP. The purpose of this is to detect transits (seen when a planet passes in front of the Sun), mutual transits (when a planet "occults" another seen from the surface o…
  2. Is there an app that lists all dates moonset/rise and sunset/rise coincide? I know the data is there I just can't be assed spending a day in excel processing it
    mercyminx.bsky.social on BlueskyAug 2026Asked for a toolHas a workaround
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