The Back End, produces an API that mashes up the Heavens Above data with The Met Office's DataPoint API to tell you which objects are overhead of your latitude and longitude at what time and whether the sky will be clear enought to observe them.
This is written in XQuery 3.0 and run's atop the eXist-db Native XML Database. You will need eXist-db trunk or 2.0 preview. http://www.exist-db.org.
The code here consists of a database backup which can be imported into eXist-db.You also need to enable the datetime XQuery extension module for eXist-db, see conf.xml in your eXist-db install folder. After starting eXist-db you can restore the backup with the Java Admin Client. After restoring, visit the URL http://localhost:8080/exist/rest/db/spaceapps/space.xql
The parameters are provided in the QueryString of the URL. The parameters that you can use are:
- lat
The latitude of the location to check, e.g. 50.7218
- lng
The longitude of the location to check, e.g. -3.5336
- format
The format to return the data from the API in, valid values are 'json' or 'xml'.Default is XML if the parameter is omitted.
- jsonp
If the format parameter is set to 'json', you may also wish to set the json parameter to a function name, in this way the JSON output will be wrapped as JSON-P and you may invoke the named function from your own javascript.
- nextClear
The nextClear parameter may be set to 'true' or 'false'. If set to true then only the next Clear Sky Event will be returned. The default is false.
The following URL would retrieve the next clear sky event in Exeter, with the results in JSON-P format: http://www.adamretter.org.uk/spaceapps/space.xql?lat=50.7218&lng=-3.5336&format=json&jsonp=getNextClearEvent&nextClear=true
The URL for a test service is available here - http://www.adamretter.org.uk/spaceapps/space.xql
Adam Retter [email protected] / @adamretter
Code has been implemented (not necessarily working proerly) for the folowing algorithms
Calculations for sunrise, sunset & twilight http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/calcdetails.html
Julian Day Taken from http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/JD_Formula.php
Greenwich Apparent Sidereal Time Taken from http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/GAST.php
Azimuth/Altitude http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/Alt_Az.php
Stephen Haddad [email protected] / @stevehadd Angela Relle