Device Output.
Every frame of this full lunation was rendered by the device itself, from the NASA LRO surface mosaic and on-chip astronomy. The phase, the libration wobble and the apparent-size change are all computed fresh.
Visuals
Overview
Tonight's Moon, Worked Out on the Desk.
The display follows how the Moon appears through the month: its changing phase, tilt and apparent size. Those calculations happen on the device, using its clock and the location set during setup.
It's the Moon-focused sibling of Planetaria, built on the same little round-screen hardware.
Everything the Moon Does at Once
The Moon is always doing several things at once. Lunaria computes each of them live.
Phase
Tonight's True Phase
Exactly how much of the Moon is lit right now, and from which side. Computed on-device and checked against NASA's JPL Horizons ephemeris to within 0.05°.
Libration
The Moon's Wobble
The Moon slowly rocks side-to-side and nods up-and-down across a month (called libration), so you peek a little around each edge as it goes. Lunaria tilts its face to match, and the wobble plays out over the month exactly as it does overhead.
Earthshine
The Dark Side, Faintly Lit
On a crescent night you can just make out the whole disc; that's sunlight bouncing off Earth onto the Moon's dark part. Lunaria renders that soft glow (earthshine) on the unlit limb.
Apparent Size
The Disc Grows and Shrinks
The Moon's orbit is an ellipse, so it looks about 14% bigger when it's closest (perigee) than when it's farthest (apogee). The disc grows and shrinks to match the real distance.
Moment Mode
Freeze the display to any date from 1900 to 2099: the Moon exactly as it looked (or will look) on a birthday, an anniversary, the night someone was born. A keepsake of a specific sky.
All On-Device
The little chip does all the math itself and draws every frame locally.
The Math
Textbook Astronomy, On a Chip
The phase, libration, and position come from standard astronomical algorithms (Meeus / the Astronomical Almanac) running on the device. The Moon's surface is NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter global photo mosaic, lit from the correct angle for the moment.
The Hardware
A Round Screen & a Small Chip
A 1.75″ round AMOLED (466×466, deep blacks) driven by an ESP32-S3 (8 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash), USB-C powered. Wi-Fi is used only once, to learn the time and your location; after that it works offline forever. Setup happens on the device itself, start to finish.
Status
Lunaria is coming soon, in pre-release with a waitlist through the CosNFX store. It runs on the same ESP32-S3 round-AMOLED hardware as Planetaria.