06 / 25·Generative Art
NOCTURNE
Planetarium almanac. A star chart you can take by the hand.
About the work
An almanac whose sky is plotted from real right-ascension and declination pairs. Twelve constellations hang in a draggable chart, naming themselves as your cursor approaches, beside a moon-phase calendar whose terminator is drawn correctly for every phase.
How it was made
The chart earned two hard bug hunts: seam lines where constellations wrapped in right ascension, and moon phases that rendered inverted. Both fixes are documented in the guide — the terminator is now a signed ellipse sweep that survives all phases.
Like every work in the exhibition, it passed three full iteration passes — a visual critique, a deepening pass, and a QA pass at 390px with reduced motion and zero console errors — and documents itself in its own build guide.
Key features
- Stars plotted from real RA/Dec coordinate data
- Draggable sky with constellation hover-naming
- Moon terminator geometry correct through all eight phases
- Almanac tables set like a printed ephemeris
Technology
- Canvas 2D
- Astronomical data
- Pointer physics
In its own light
