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Project Maintainers

About starward​

starward began as an educational project to create a professional-grade astronomy toolkit that implements calculations from first principles, without relying on external astronomy libraries. The goal is to provide both a practical tool and a learning resource for understanding celestial mechanics.

Philosophy​

"Per aspera ad astra" — Through hardships to the stars

The project is guided by several principles:

  • Educational First — Code should teach as well as compute
  • Zero Dependencies — All astronomy calculations implemented from scratch
  • Professional Quality — Production-ready with comprehensive testing
  • Beautiful Output — Rich terminal formatting that makes data shine

History​

DateMilestone
2025-01Project inception
2025-01v0.1.0 "Genesis" — Core time and coordinate systems
2025-01v0.2.0 "Celestial" — Sun and Moon calculations
2025-01v0.3.0 "Planets" — Planetary ephemerides
2025-01v0.4.0 "Deep Sky" — Messier, NGC, IC, Caldwell catalogs
2025-01v0.4.1 — Allure test reporting

Core Team​

oddurs​

Project Lead & Primary Developer

  • GitHub: @oddurs
  • Role: Architecture, core calculations, documentation

Created starward to explore computational astronomy while building something genuinely useful for observers and educators.

Contributing​

We welcome new contributors! See the Contributing Guide to get started.

Areas where help is especially appreciated:

  • Planetary calculations — Higher-precision ephemerides
  • Observation planning — Scheduling and optimization
  • Visualization — Sky charts and plots
  • Documentation — Tutorials and examples
  • Testing — Edge cases and validation

Acknowledgments​

starward builds on centuries of astronomical knowledge. Special thanks to:

  • Jean Meeus — Astronomical Algorithms, the definitive reference for computational astronomy
  • The IAU — For standardizing coordinate systems and constants
  • NASA/JPL — For planetary ephemeris data and validation
  • The open-source community — For tools like Python, pytest, Rich, and Click

Contact​

  • Issues & Features: GitHub Issues
  • Security: Report security issues privately via GitHub

"The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff." — Carl Sagan