Nightwatch

Inspiration

We wanted to make it easier for anyone—from first-time stargazers to experienced astronomers—to get excited about the night sky. Finding useful astronomy resources and a dark place to observe can take more effort than it should, so we built Nightwatch to bring those ideas together.

What it does

Nightwatch is an astronomy-centered website for people interested in stargazing. It brings together helpful astronomy information and a light pollution map to help visitors find better places to observe the stars.

How we built it

We built Nightwatch as a website and worked to make it available online through our domain, so people can explore it beyond our local development setup. Our frontend tech stack includes a static HTML page deployed on GitHub Pages, using Vite.js, TailwindCSS, and the HTML/CSS/JS trio. Our intended backend or 'pre-deployment' stack uses Python with folium-- an open-source Python library used to create interactive web maps and geospatial data visualizations, as well as the Gemini API to create short summaries of the next four week's astronomical events near Earth.

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge was finding an open API with information about light pollution around the world. We also had to figure out how to connect our domain and host the project on the web instead of keeping it available only locally. Lastly, it was challenging to connect backend with frontend, and there were many times where certain changes wouldn't get pushed completely or dependencies didn't match, so the website would have a lot of inconsistencies. However, debugging through every individual issue helped us learn about the iterative process of programming in general.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we brought our idea to life as a working website and made it accessible online. We’re also proud to have created a starting point for making stargazing easier to explore.

What we learned

We learned how to research data sources, work with web hosting and domains, and turn a simple idea into a project people can visit. We also learned how to use Folium API to make map and data visualizations, how to use Github Pages to make static webpages, and how to utilize Gemini API and Firebase.

What's next for Nightwatch?

We’d like to keep improving Nightwatch by adding more useful astronomy features and making it easier for people to plan their next night under the stars.