Three changes driven by the same goal: make each monthly moon post
look like east captured it at that exact moment.
Tighter illumination windows (±4% of target phase):
Full moon: 95% → 96–100% (was a 5-point band; now hugs exact full)
Quarters: 40–65% → 46–54% (was a 25-point band; now ±4% of 50%)
This ensures the NASA Dial-a-Moon render timestamp is pulled within
4 percentage points of the true phase, making the fetched image
genuinely represent that night's moon. One fresh fetch per event,
~3/month, cached by hour — never reused across months.
Atmospheric cloud veil from east's surrounding sky:
_extract_cloud_veil() samples the annular sky region just outside
east's moon disk (2×–5× radius), scales it to the output frame,
blurs heavily (GaussianBlur r≈output_width/10) so it reads as haze
rather than an upscaled photo, then blends it over the NASA composite
at an opacity proportional to sky brightness:
sky < 5% mean brightness → no veil (clear dark night)
sky ~10% → ~17% veil (thin haze / airglow)
sky ≥ 20% → 40% veil (max, MOON_CLOUD_OVERLAY_MAX_OPACITY)
After the veil pass the NASA moon disk is re-pasted sharply so the
haze sits naturally behind the crisp lunar surface.
This is the honest answer to "east can't capture high-res clouds":
east's real atmospheric fingerprint becomes the veil texture.
New sky-cam.conf keys:
MOON_CLOUD_OVERLAY_ENABLED=true
MOON_CLOUD_OVERLAY_MAX_OPACITY=0.40
#MOON_CLOUD_OVERLAY_BLUR=0 (0 = auto)
https://claude.ai/code/session_01HkTxpNSTWtViZzxbrbKytR
The previous east-flavored composite (tight-crop east region + lunar
texture overlay) was honest but visually limited: 38-px source moon, no
real terminator shadows on quarters, and a faint upscaled-halo
background that was less compelling than just a clean lunar render.
New flow:
- East stays the witness (verifies the moon was visible during the
collection window) and supplies the timestamp.
- moon_dialamoon.py fetches the NASA SVS Dial-a-Moon render for that
exact UTC hour. Free, public-domain, real-physics: correct phase,
libration, and crater shadows for any timestamp.
- moon_composite.render_phase_closeup() places that render at ~92% of
frame height on a 1920x1080 black background -- the long-telephoto
look the user asked for.
- One API call per phase event (~36/year), cached forever in
moon-ref/dialamoon/.
Quarter moons now show real 3D crater shadows along the terminator,
which the prior algorithmic phase-shadow couldn't simulate from a
full-moon reference.
Adds MOON_REQUIRE_EAST_VERIFY=true|false toggle so the user can choose
"only post when east saw it" (default, current behavior) vs "post every
cycle regardless of weather over east."
Drops the install-time lunar reference download (no longer needed) and
the now-unused per-phase phase-shadow path stays in moon_composite.py
for reference / future reuse.
https://claude.ai/code/session_015PBVDESC3KLMbq1LpA6qLn
Two new jobs operate on the SUNRISE_CAM, sharing three Python helpers
(moon_phase, moon_detect, moon_composite) and one cached lunar texture:
- moon-track.sh: nightly batch detects the moon in each east frame,
crops a 480x480 box around it, stitches into an mp4 that holds the
moon roughly centred while clouds and stars drift past.
- moon-phase-monthly.sh: daily check that runs whichever phase composite
is due that day. Handles full moon (posts D+3), first quarter (D+2,
best-effort due to daytime-only geometry from east), and third quarter
(D+2). Picks the frame closest in time to the exact phase moment that
meets quality / altitude / illumination thresholds, then composites
the cached lunar texture into it -- sky/halo/parallactic-angle/timing
real from east, surface detail borrowed from the reference image.
Honest-by-design: a 38-px white blob from a wide-field IP camera cannot
be enhanced into crater detail by software. The composite makes the
borrowing explicit and constrains everything else (when, where, sky,
orientation) to match what east actually saw.
install.sh now downloads the skyfield ephemeris (de421.bsp) and the
default lunar reference (Wikipedia CC BY-SA full-moon photo) on first
run. Both can be overridden via .env.
https://claude.ai/code/session_015PBVDESC3KLMbq1LpA6qLn
Claude