Cosmic Quest

Website Landing Page
Tonight's Sky
Local Events
AI Tutor
Learning Progress

Inspiration## Inspiration

The Stellar Gateway Quest theme “Empowering Communities Through Stellar Solutions” immediately resonated with me. As an amateur astronomer, I’ve often seen friends give up on stargazing because the sky is confusing, the weather unpredictable, and most online resources are scattered. Cosmic Quest was born to turn any night sky into an interactive classroom that pairs real-time data with structured, AI-guided learning — so anyone, anywhere, can join the global astronomy community.[1]

What It Does

Tonight’s Sky – pulls live weather, cloud cover, visibility scores, NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, and exact ISS pass times for the user’s location.
Local Events – surfaces eclipse parties, meteor-shower meet-ups, and lectures to foster in-person learning.
AI Astronomy Tutor – a Perplexity Sonar-powered chatbot that answers only space questions, politely rejecting off-topic queries to keep learning focused.
Learning Tracks – three gamified courses (Stargazing Basics, Planetary Observation, Constellation Mastery) with progress tracking and badges.

How I Built It

graph TD
  A[Frontend (PWA)] -->|HTML5 • CSS3 • Vanilla JS| B(UI Components)
  B --> C(API Layer)
  C -->|NASA APOD • OpenWeather • N2YO ISS| D[Real-time Data]
  C -->|Perplexity Sonar Pro| E[AI Tutor]
  F[Serverless Functions] -->|Vercel| C
  B --> G[Service Worker]
  G --> H[Offline Caching]

Vanilla JS + CSS modules for a fast, framework-free UI
Service Worker for offline caching → sub-2 s loads on mobile
Vercel serverless functions hide API keys and handle proxy calls
All components styled with a new blue-to-teal gradient to distinguish the rebrand

Challenges

Rate-limited APIs – solved with client-side caching and serverless proxying.
Location accuracy – implemented browser geolocation fallback inputs.
AI content filtering – added a regex guard + system prompt to ensure the tutor accepts only astronomy questions.