astroterm
display real-time celestial maps in the terminal
TLDR
Launch with color and constellations
$ astroterm --color --constellations
Set observer location by city name$ astroterm --city "[Boston]"
Set observer location by latitude and longitude$ astroterm --latitude [42.36] --longitude [-71.06]
Display a specific date and time in UTC$ astroterm --datetime [1969-07-16T13:32:00]
Animate at high speed with custom FPS$ astroterm --color --constellations --speed [10000] --fps [64]
Draw with azimuthal grid and unicode characters$ astroterm --grid --unicode --metadata
SYNOPSIS
astroterm [options]
DESCRIPTION
astroterm is a terminal-based planetarium written in C that renders real-time positions of stars, planets, constellations, and other astronomical objects directly in the console. It computes celestial positions based on the observer's location and time, providing an interactive sky map without a graphical desktop environment. Press q or ESC to quit (or any key with --quit-on-any).
PARAMETERS
-a, --latitude degrees
Observer latitude [-90, 90] (default: 0.0).-o, --longitude degrees
Observer longitude [-180, 180] (default: 0.0).-i, --city name
Use latitude and longitude of the given city.-d, --datetime yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss
Observation datetime in UTC (default: system time).-t, --threshold float
Only render stars brighter than this magnitude (default: 5.0).-l, --label-thresh float
Label stars brighter than this magnitude (default: 0.25).-f, --fps int
Frames per second (default: 24).-s, --speed float
Animation speed multiplier (default: 1.0).-c, --color
Enable terminal colors.-C, --constellations
Draw constellation stick figures.-g, --grid
Draw an azimuthal grid overlay.-u, --unicode
Use Unicode characters for rendering.-m, --metadata
Display metadata information.-r, --aspect-ratio float
Override the calculated terminal cell aspect ratio.-q, --quit-on-any
Quit on any keypress (default: quit on 'q' or ESC only).-h, --help
Print help message.-v, --version
Display version information.
INSTALL
sudo dnf install astroterm
sudo pacman -S astroterm
sudo apk add astroterm
sudo zypper install astroterm
brew install astroterm
nix profile install nixpkgs#astroterm
CAVEATS
Color output requires --color flag and a terminal with 256-color or truecolor support. Display quality depends on terminal size and font. Without --latitude/--longitude or --city, the observer defaults to 0,0 (Gulf of Guinea).
