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There are a lot of sun path diagrams online (i.e. https://www.gaisma.com/en/location/seattle-washington.html), but I'm struggle to find a moon path diagram. Is that called something different?

I'm trying to determine if the full moon rise is visible from my window at all, and if so when to watch out for one.

Denny
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  • Would something like Stellarium be suitable? https://stellarium.org/ – Dave Gremlin Feb 13 '22 at 16:54
  • not sure how I can get, say, a year worth of Moon positions in Stellarium. Is it scriptable? – Denny Feb 13 '22 at 18:47
  • It would be complicated and require a lot of work on your part, but yes Stellarium does support scripts. You could write your own script to get all the data you're looking for and then plot it up yourself. I'm guessing though, that you're looking for a resource that has already done all that hard work for you. – zephyr Feb 13 '22 at 22:29
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    I did a crude version myself. I downloaded moon ephemerides for 2022 from NASA (link to data file at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4955), then I followed http://stjarnhimlen.se/comp/tutorial.html to convert Right Ascension and Declination to azimuth and altitude in Google Sheets and then did a scatter plot for this year ~full moons (phase>90): https://imgur.com/a/ubYVdMv

    View from my window is to the left of the vertical red line. I guess that only leaves me with winter Moon rises.

     – Denny Feb 13 '22 at 23:41
  • If you are interested in trying a little Python, have a look at this answer to Sunset on (Mountain) from (Viewing Point) That's an old script and unusual as I'd made Mt. Fuji an object. Skyfield has a lot of new methods, including event detection and almanac function. – uhoh Feb 14 '22 at 05:15
  • yay this one is super easy to use (after I figured out how the time is set up), the Moon path for Seattle is: https://imgur.com/a/jOFNBpk – Denny Feb 22 '22 at 00:22

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This is still under development, but should suffice. It shows the path of many different objects/constellations through the sky.

https://www.celestialprogramming.com/Sky_Path/

enter image description here

Greg Miller
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  • yay this is cool! this seems to be only for one day, I would like to see more comprehensive picture, I wonder if I can webscript it or something. – Denny Feb 14 '22 at 03:50
  • I do plan to put start and end dates so you can see how it changes with time. – Greg Miller Feb 14 '22 at 14:30
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Maybe this is the website you are looking for. Input your latitude & longtitude, and choose a day, it generates a moon path diagram for you.

https://datalab24.com/earth_astronomy/moon_path

enter image description here

Voyager
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