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Next Ruby Project -- Rails Project -- Ephemeris

This is going to be my first rails web app, but I'm going to build the heart or the mechanics of it in Ruby first. This is my next big personal project. I'm putting it ahead of all other ones because this one has major usability.

What is Ephemeris?

Ephemeris is a program that calculates the phases of the moon and the time for sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset for any location on the planet. There's a lot of math I don't have a clue how to do involved.

So here are the end goals

By supplying your location (say Los Angeles) and a date you can get:


  • MoonPhase in a neat little graphic of the day
  • Sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset
  • Ability to create a moon calendar for the month(s) supplied.
  • Ability to create a sunrise/set moonrise/set table for month(s) supplied.
  • Give the exact time of full moon and new moon. 
  • The all the times should be accurate to the timezone of your location. 

First step is finding the math to calculate this and code it in Ruby. Then I'll create a rails app that will run this from a website.
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