NIGHTSCRIBE
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NightScribe — Visual Style Guide (viz/)

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One renderer, two outputs: everything under nightscribe/viz/ draws on a matplotlib canvas embedded in the GUI and exports PNG files ready to attach to posts. Style is defined once in viz/style.py.

Style

  • Dark space background (#0b0d17 family), consistent accent palette, clear sans-serif type, subtle grid, optional watermark "NightScribe · <observatory name>".

  • Export formats: 1080×1080 px (Instagram square), 1200×630 px (Facebook/X card). DPI fixed so text stays legible on phones.

  • Tests render with the Agg backend (no display needed).

Views

orbit_view.py — top-down ecliptic chart

  • Orbits of Mercury→Mars (→Jupiter for Trojans / long-period comets), planets at their current positions (Schlyter), the object's orbit highlighted, its current position and a ±N-day track.

  • Close-approach inset: zoom centred on Earth with the Moon's orbit drawn and the flyby labelled in lunar distances — "to put it in perspective".

  • Comets: anti-sunward tail marker in the zoom inset.

sky_view.py — night altitude curve

Altitude vs. time for the target across the night, twilight phases shaded, Moon altitude overlaid. Exoplanet transits draw ingress/egress windows (transit_view.py adds a simple theoretical light curve for posts).

SkyChart — interactive visibility chart (ADR-029)

Vector widget in gui/widgets/sky_widget.py (no matplotlib): the same altitude curve as sky_view.py, plus the dark window, the safe band (ADR-020), best time, local horizon, the Moon and the transit. Legend in the bottom-right of the data area identifying each line (target, Moon, horizon limit) with the same style and colour, over a translucent backdrop; labels go through self.tr() and are translated ES/EN. The curve is clamped to 0° at draw time (nothing below the Y axis), but the tooltip still reports the real altitude.

Every chart widget also carries a watermark ("NightScribe", configurable with set_watermark()) in the bottom-right corner, painted in viewport space (stays anchored while zooming/panning) and also stamped on exported PNGs — gui/widgets/base_chart.py.

sun_panel.py — Sun today

Latest SDO image (channel selectable) + our own active-region map plotted from NOAA coordinates (our "Raben" without copyright issues).

sn_view.py — supernova field

Reference cutout (DESI Legacy Survey / DSS via hips2fits) with a crosshair at the SN position; side-by-side or animated blink GIF when the user provides the observatory image.

Aligned pair (user FITS + PanSTARRS DR1 g cutout matched in centre/scale/rotation via hips2fits) rendered for blinking: percentile-stretched frames with the SN marked at its catalogued position, exported as animated GIF (blink and fade modes) and as a side-by-side PNG for posts. Captions are single-language (UI language) and name the configured observatory; exports can be zoomed around the SN (crop_zoom), the marker size is adjustable, the survey background can be equalized with auto_gain (median matching), and the blink dwell is configurable. The same stretch and zoom feed the live GUI blink tab.

ApproachChart — animated geocentric view (ADR-029)

Interactive vector chart in gui/widgets/approach_widget.py (no matplotlib). Shows the object approaching from Earth's perspective, using the Moon as a fixed 1 LD scale reference (real position at the reference date, not animated).

  • Earth at the origin (ACCENT2 dot), moving object point (ACCENT).

  • 1 LD reference circle (MUTED); Moon at its real ecliptic position on it.

  • Dashed geocentric track (ACCENT) over a ±30-day window centred on the CA (or the given date when e ≥ 1).

  • CA diamond + CA X.XX LD label (closed orbits only).

  • Status: <date> · X.XX LD <trend> · CA X.XX LD (<CA date>) or <date> · X.XX LD <trend> · no return (open orbit).

  • Play/Pause + scrub slider + hover over the track (R = X.XX LD).

  • PNG export via ChartView.export_png (renders what is visible, zoom included).

  • Framing (the whole ±30-day sweep): the frame half-extent fits the approach arc — span = min(1.9 · max(CA, current distance, arc maximum), CA / _PASS_SCENE_MIN), floor _MIN_SPAN_LD — so the asteroid is on canvas from the moment the chart loads at any pass distance, without a zoom ceiling. On very close flybys the guard CA / _PASS_SCENE_MIN (0.30) stops the pass from sinking into the Earth corner; on open orbits (e ≥ 1) the arc / current point fit the frame the same way.

  • Earth–Moon bundle: always drawn and always legible. The pair lives in the corner farthest from the encounter; the 1 LD reference circle is drawn with its true centre at Earth, clamped to a legible radius band [_BUNDLE_RADIUS_MIN, _BUNDLE_RADIUS_MAX] scene units (the Moon keeps its true ecliptic direction, so out-of-band distances are diagrammatic — the separation reads in the status line, not from the drawing). Inside-the-Moon- orbit flybys no longer crop it. Outer track that would escape the frame is clipped at the frame edge.

  • CA marker (closed orbits): with the sweep always in frame the closest approach is always the classic diamond + CA X.XX LD label (no edge pin).

  • Labels never step on objects: each label probe avoids the track, other labels, the solid markers (Earth, Moon, CA — halo radius + _OBST_PAD) and the frame edge, so no label ever covers a body.

  • Earth/Moon labels auto-separate: the Earth label is given the side opposite the Moon and the Moon label the side behind its own body (both derived from the Moon's scene direction), and when the two markers sit close together the labels walk out a radius ladder (_PROBE_RADII) into the empty space instead of butting against each other by the origin.

  • Orbital math in core/approach_math.py (pure, no matplotlib).

  • Does not replace the static inset in viz/orbit_view.py (social PNGs are unchanged); it is the live GUI equivalent.

Visual polish:

  • Separation halos (a thin ring in the body's own colour, NoBrush, cosmetic pen) around Earth, the Moon, the object point and the CA diamond — the bodies always read as distinct, even when their distances coincide.

  • Labels (Moon / Earth / CA) carry no background box: each text is echoed underneath as a thin 2 px BG-colour contour (QPainterPathStroker), which keeps the glyphs readable over the dashed track and the circle while the canvas stays light.

  • Collision-avoidant placement: each label probes 8 directions around its anchor (starting from the most natural one) and takes the first whose rect neither crosses the track, another label nor a solid marker (and stays inside the frame); if none is safe it falls back to the preferred one. Labels are fixed in the frame (they do not follow the scrubber).

  • Geocentric track dashed at 1.5 px [8, 5] (thin on purpose — the moving point reads over its own line at any zoom); the 1 LD reference circle dotted at 1.5 px [2, 4] (both cosmetic pens: they do not thicken on zoom).

Rules

  • No third-party copyrighted images in exports: only public-domain (SDO) or public-service (Legacy Survey / CDS) material with credit, or our own renders.

  • Every viz function takes the data dict and returns/exports a figure; no network inside viz/.