DashPhoon

About

DashPhoon is a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that displays the phase of the Moon.

Modes

DashPhoon can either display the Moon as it appears now, or else at some other time. In the latter case, the display can be frozen at a particular time, adjusted by keystrokes, or advance rapidly by hours or days.

Preference	Key	Description
Now	r	Display the Moon as it appears now.
Freeze	s	Freeze the Moon at a particular time.
Fast	g	Advance rapidly, an hour at each step.
Faster	z	Advance rapidly, a day at each step.
	h (H)	Move forward (back) an hour.
	d (D)	Move forward (back) a day.
	m (M)	Move forward (back) a lunar month.
	0	Jump to the current time.
	1	Jump to July 20, 1969.
	2	Jump to November 19, 1969.
	4	Jump to February 5, 1971.
	5	Jump to July 30, 1971.
	6	Jump to April 21, 1972.
	7	Jump to December 11, 1972.
	8	Jump to January 27, 1967.

Labels

DashPhoon can display one of several labels with information about the phase of the Moon.

Preference	Key	Description
Time Previous	P	Show the time since the previous quarter phase.
Time Next	N	Show the time until the next quarter phase.
Time since New Moon	n	Show the time since the last New Moon.
Phase angle	a	Show the phase angle (New Moon at 0°)
Visible fraction	f	Show the fraction of the Moon's face that is visible.
Distance to Moon	k	Show the distance to the Moon, in km.
UTC Date	u	Show the date, in UTC.
Local Date	l	Show the local date. (Note: DashPhoon is not a clock; in real-time mode, it updates once an hour.)
Phase	p	Show the name of the current phase.

Clicking on the displayed label will advance to the next message in sequence.

Style

Preference		Description
Opaque Label		Display the label on an opaque background.
Transparent Label		Display the label without a background.
No Label		Do not display a label at all.

Shadow

The shadow intensity may be adjusted with the slider, or with the keys “+” and “−”.

Credits

DashPhoon was inspired by Jef Poskanzer's phoon, a program that displays the phase of the Moon as ASCII art.

The code that performs the astronomical calculations was derived (via phoon) from John Walker's moontool.

Photos and audio from NASA.

French translation by Ange Heureux. German translation with assistance from Joachim Korff of MACup magazine. Japanese translation by Christopher Li.

Disclaimer

DashPhoon's displays are correct* for a hypothetical observer at the center of the Earth. (This is good, because if you are at the center of the Earth, you probably cannot see the Moon directly.) Depending on where you are on the surface, DashPhoon's picture of the Moon may differ by up to about two pixels in any direction from what you would actually see.

DashPhoon is not a substitute for going outside and looking up. Do not use DashPhoon as your sole source of information when planning space travel. Do not dance naked under a full DashPhoon.

* Displays may not be correct.

Download

The latest version of DashPhoon can be found at DashboardWidgets.