Star Chart

A simple set of CLI tools designed to:

• Automatically download and parse astronomical observation data into a GeoPackage for star chart authoring.
• Plot star charts using QGIS layouts.

Installation

To install this tool and all of its dependencies to the current virtual environment, run:

uv sync

Usage

All commands listed below can also be executed directly as Python modules i.e.: python -m star_chart [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS].

download

To download astronomical data for a specific observation date/time (e.g. 2023-06-03 or 2023-06-04T02:00:00) and location (e.g. -21.232989, -44.998945) run the download command as follows:

star-chart download -- 2023-06-04T02:00:00 -21.232989 -44.998945

which is a shorthand for:

star-chart download -c ./config.ini -d ./download -o ./output.gpkg -- 2023-06-04T02:00:00 -21.232989 -44.998945

Given a ./config.ini file, the script will download all required temporary data to the ./download fodler, creating a GeoPackage at ./output.gpkg containing three resulting layers: stars, constellations and boundaries.

For convenience, a sample config.ini is available at the root of this project.

Feel free to call star-chart download --help for help.

plot

Feel free to call star-chart plot --help for help.