Moon Phases, Sunrise and Sunset

So I want the web front end to give some other data, that might be of use to people.

Since I am also into astronomy, I would like to know what phase the moon is in (not that we’ve seen all that much of it recently). Turns out some clever bloke has written a php class to tell you what phase the moon is in, source is available via github.

PHP 5.1+ contains functions for calculating sunrise and sunset. As far as I can see there’s 3 functions, date_sunrisedate_sunset and date_sun_info. The latter looks like the best bet as you don’t have to supply as many variables.

Now I just need to get the GPS coords for my flat.

3 thoughts on “Moon Phases, Sunrise and Sunset

  1. Did you get your moon phase working?

    I found a PHP script and converted it into C++ so it would be easy to convert back.

    std::string WorkOutMoonPhase(int year, int month, int day) {
    std::string phase = “”;

    float c, e, jd, b = 0;
    if (month b, take integer part of jd
    jd -= b; //subtract integer part to leave fractional part of original jd
    b = round(jd * 8); //scale fraction from 0-8 and round
    if (b >= 8 )
    {
    b = 0;//0 and 8 are the same so turn 8 into 0
    }
    if (b == 0) phase = “New Moon”;
    if (b == 1) phase = “Waxing Crescent Moon”;
    if (b == 2) phase = “Quarter Moon”;
    if (b == 3) phase = “Waxing Gibbous Moon”;
    if (b == 4) phase = “Full Moon”;
    if (b == 5) phase = “Waning Gibbous Moon”;
    if (b == 6) phase = “Last Quarter Moon”;
    if (b == 7) phase = “Waning Crescent Moon”;
    if (b 7) phase = “Error”;

    return phase;
    }

    1. Several bits of code have been stripped out. Hopefully this version will work…

      std::string WorkOutMoonPhase(int year, int month, int day) {
      std::string phase = “”;

      float c, e, jd, b = 0;
      if (month < 3)
      {
      year–;
      month += 12;
      }
      ++month;
      c = 365.25 * year;
      e = 30.6 * month;
      jd = c + e + day – 694039.09; //jd is total days elapsed
      jd /= 29.5305882; //divide by the moon cycle
      b = (int) jd; //int(jd) -> b, take integer part of jd
      jd -= b; //subtract integer part to leave fractional part of original jd
      b = round(jd * 8); //scale fraction from 0-8 and round
      if (b >= 8 )
      {
      b = 0;//0 and 8 are the same so turn 8 into 0
      }
      if (b == 0) phase = “New Moon”;
      if (b == 1) phase = “Waxing Crescent Moon”;
      if (b == 2) phase = “Quarter Moon”;
      if (b == 3) phase = “Waxing Gibbous Moon”;
      if (b == 4) phase = “Full Moon”;
      if (b == 5) phase = “Waning Gibbous Moon”;
      if (b == 6) phase = “Last Quarter Moon”;
      if (b == 7) phase = “Waning Crescent Moon”;
      if (b < 0 || b > 7) phase = “Error”;

      return phase;
      }

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