@magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-celestial

Tempo plugin for location-aware solar twilight events (sun/solar), lunar phase tracking (moon/lunar), and astronomical tidal mechanics (tide/tides).

Installation

npm install @magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-celestial

Features

• Solar Day Cycles: Calculates daylight, night, civil-twilight, nautical-twilight, and astronomical-twilight.
• Ephemeris Data: Returns sunrise, sunset, noon, total daylightDurationMs, and explicit latitude/longitude for given coordinates.
• Lunar Phase & Ephemeris: Calculates 8 discrete lunar phase states (new-moon, waxing-crescent, etc.), illumination 0.0–1.0 fraction, age in days, hemisphere-aware emoji indicators, and location-aware moonrise and moonset events.
• Astronomical Tidal Mechanics: Provides pure astronomical solar/lunar alignment calculations (t.term.tide, t.term.tides) for spring, neap, and normal tides, alongside isKingTide perigee indicators.

[!NOTE] Pure Astronomical Calculations: Tidal state resolution relies exclusively on deterministic celestial mechanics (solar-lunar ecliptic longitude alignment (Δλ) and anomalistic lunar perigee proximity) for reproducible, offset-independent math across all time zones and locations.

Geographic Coordinates & Null Contract

[!IMPORTANT] Location-Dependent Null Contract:

• Global Astronomical Properties (t.term.moon, t.term.lunar.phase, t.term.tides.isSpringTide, t.term.tides.alignmentDeg) resolve location-independently and are always computed.
• Geo-Dependent Properties (t.term.sun, solar.sunrise, solar.sunset, solar.noon, lunar.moonrise, lunar.moonset, tides.lunarTideMinute) evaluate to null when geographic coordinates (geo: { lat, lng }) are omitted.
• Distinction: Property access on t.term evaluates to undefined if CelestialPlugin is not loaded, and to null if the plugin is active but location coordinates were not supplied. When debug >= 1 is enabled in Tempo configuration, a developer warning is logged when evaluating geo-dependent keys without coordinates.

Obtaining Coordinates

Use geoLookup() from @magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-geo to automatically resolve location coordinates across both browser and server environments:

npm install @magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-geo

[!WARNING] Geolocation Behavior:

• Browser: On first invocation, geoLookup() will prompt the user for permission to access hardware location services.
• Server: In Node.js or server environments without GPS hardware, coordinates are resolved via IP geolocation representing the physical server/datacenter network location.

import { Tempo } from '@magmacomputing/tempo';
import { CelestialPlugin } from '@magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-celestial';
import { geoLookup } from '@magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-geo';

Tempo.use(CelestialPlugin);

// Automatically resolves location coordinates via browser hardware or server IP
const geo = await geoLookup();
const t = new Tempo({ geo });

console.log(t.term.sun);                 // 'daylight' or 'night'
console.log(t.term.lunar.moonrise);      // Tempo instance for local moonrise
console.log(t.term.tide);                // 'spring', 'neap', or 'normal'

Auto-Installation (Side-Effect Import)

import { Tempo } from '@magmacomputing/tempo';
import { geoLookup } from '@magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-geo';
import '@magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-celestial/install';

const geo = await geoLookup();
const t = new Tempo({ geo });
console.log(t.term.sun);

Usage

import { Tempo } from '@magmacomputing/tempo';
import { CelestialPlugin } from '@magmacomputing/tempo-plugin-celestial';

Tempo.use(CelestialPlugin);

const t = new Tempo('2026-06-21T12:00:00Z', { geo: { lat: 40.7128, lng: -74.006 } });

// --- Solar Day State & Phase Querying ---
console.log(t.term.sun);                 // 'daylight'
console.log(t.term.solar.key);           // 'daylight'
console.log(t.term.solar.phase);         // 'Daylight'
console.log(t.term.solar.phases);        // ['night', 'astronomical-twilight', 'nautical-twilight', 'civil-twilight', 'daylight']
console.log(t.term.solar.sunrise);       // Tempo instance for local sunrise
console.log(t.term.solar.geo);           // { latitude: 40.7128, longitude: -74.006 }

// --- Lunar Phase & Ephemeris ---
console.log(t.term.moon);                // 'waxing-crescent'
console.log(t.term.lunar.phase);         // 'Waxing Crescent'
console.log(t.term.lunar.phases);        // ['new-moon', 'waxing-crescent', 'first-quarter', 'waxing-gibbous', 'full-moon', 'waning-gibbous', 'third-quarter', 'waning-crescent']
console.log(t.term.lunar.illumination);  // 0.45
console.log(t.term.lunar.moonrise);      // Tempo instance for local moonrise (or null)

// --- Astronomical Tidal Mechanics ---
console.log(t.term.tide);                // 'spring', 'neap', or 'normal'
console.log(t.term.tides.alignmentDeg);  // Solar-lunar alignment angle (0..360°)
console.log(t.term.tides.isSpringTide);  // true during Syzygy (New or Full Moon)
console.log(t.term.tides.isNeapTide);    // true during Quadrature (1st or 3rd Quarter)
console.log(t.term.tides.isKingTide);    // true when Spring Tide aligns with Lunar Perigee

// --- Programmatic Navigation ---
// Use .phases to dynamically navigate to the next lunar phase
const nextPhaseKey = t.term.lunar.phases[t.term.lunar.index % 8];
const nextMoonTempo = t.set(`#lunar.${nextPhaseKey}`);

Phase & State Discovery Metadata

LunarTerm, SolarTerm, and TidalTerm expose immutable, frozen array references (Object.freeze) containing all valid identifiers for terms resolution:

• Static Term References: LunarTerm.phases, SolarTerm.phases, and TidalTerm.phases are available on the plugin definitions without instantiating a Tempo object.
• Instance Scope References: t.term.lunar.phases, t.term.solar.phases, and t.term.tides.states share the exact same frozen array references (t.term.lunar.phases === LunarTerm.phases), adding zero memory or GC overhead.

[!TIP] Indexing Tip: Following ISO calendar standards that drive Temporal and Tempo, .index is 1-based (1..8), while .phases is a standard 0-indexed JavaScript array (0..7).

• Current Phase: Use lunar.key or lunar.phases[lunar.index - 1].
• Next Phase: Use lunar.phases[lunar.index % 8] (1-based index modulo 8 seamlessly targets the next phase index with automatic wrap-around).

Documentation

For full documentation and live examples, visit the Celestial Plugin Documentation.

Licensing

This is a Community plugin. It is completely free and open-source for personal and commercial use. No license token is required.

License

MIT