AstroSpot

Inspiration Ever tried driving out to a dark-sky spot in New Jersey, only to realize once you get there that it's super cloudy or the moon is way too bright? Regular weather apps just tell you if it's raining—they don't tell you if you can actually see stars! We wanted to fix that by building a beginner-friendly app that helps students, families, and amateur astronomers find the absolute clearest, darkest nights without guesswork.

What it does AstroSpot is a sleek, East Coast stargazing planner that gives you an instant 0–100 visibility score based on live weather data. Key features include:

East Coast Location Picker: Tailored for spots across New Jersey and nearby states (like Princeton, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City).

Instant Stargazing Score: Combines cloud cover, moon illumination, and light pollution into an easy-to-read rating (Good, Fair, or Poor).

Interactive Contrail Lab & Sky Guide: Simulates upper-air atmospheric risks and shows what constellations (like Orion and Cassiopeia) are visible right above your local horizon.

Beginner's Guide: A built-in glossary explaining moon phases and astronomy terms for newcomers.

How we built it We coded everything manually from scratch using clean HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript—no bloated templates or black-box frameworks. It connects to live Open-Meteo weather forecasts to pull real-time atmospheric data. Crucially, we also built in an automatic offline fallback system so that if venue Wi-Fi acts up or drops during a demo, sample inputs and mock scenarios keep running smoothly without crashing.

Challenges we ran into API Integration: Figuring out how to fetch live weather data and map it cleanly into our custom scoring formula without slowing down the page.

Offline Resilience: Making sure the app wouldn't break or show blank fields if the school Wi-Fi dropped right in the middle of testing or presenting.

Time Management: Keeping our code files (index.html, styles.css, and script.js) simplified and organized so all three of us could work together smoothly on game day.

Accomplishments that we're proud of The Custom Scoring Math: Successfully coding our weighted formula (Score = 100 - (cloud_cover * 0.6) - (moon_illumination * 0.4)) so it accurately reflects real stargazing conditions.

Clean UI Design: Building a dark-mode space aesthetic that looks professional and feels immersive to use.

Smooth Teamwork: Dividing up roles effectively between math/logic, UI/maps, and API documentation to cross the finish line right on time.

What we learned We learned a ton about how to work with live weather APIs, structure clean vanilla JavaScript code, and handle error states gracefully when network requests fail. We also learned how important it is to design for real-world reliability, especially when presenting under tight hackathon deadlines!

What's next for AstroSpot Expanding our dark-sky park database with precise GPS trail coordinates across the entire tri-state area.

Adding a community observation feature so local stargazers can log and share what they see in the night sky.