Lunaria
Owner's Manual
The actual Moon, tonight.
Lunaria shows the real Moon as it is right now: tonight's phase, its craters in relief along the line between day and night, the slow rocking of its face, its true size as it nears and recedes, and every lunar eclipse as it happens. Every frame is computed on Lunaria itself. There is no app and no account; your WiFi is used only for the clock and your approximate location.
1. Quick start
You'll need Lunaria, a USB-C cable and charger, and your WiFi name and password.
- Plug it in. Any USB-C phone charger works. After a few seconds Lunaria shows a Set up WiFi screen.
- Join its hotspot. On your phone, connect to the WiFi network
Lunaria-Setup(no password). A setup page opens by itself; if it doesn't, browse to192.168.4.1. - Enter your WiFi and tap Save. Lunaria joins your network, shows its new address, and restarts.
- That's it. Within a minute it sets its clock, finds your time zone, and shows tonight's Moon.
To change settings later, open http://lunaria.local (or the address it showed)
from any phone or computer on the same WiFi.
2. What you're looking at
| Phase | The lit part of the disc is exactly the part the Sun lights on the real Moon now. |
| Relief | Lunaria carries the Moon's terrain, measured by NASA's laser altimeter in lunar orbit, and lights every slope with the real Sun. Along the terminator, crater rims catch the light while their floors stay in shadow; near full Moon the relief flattens, as it does in the sky. |
| Libration | The Moon's face rocks side to side and nods up and down by up to about 8° over a month. Lunaria shows the face tilted as it really is. |
| Size | The Moon is about 14% wider at perigee (nearest) than at apogee. Lunaria's disc grows and shrinks with the true distance. |
| Earthshine (optional) | The faint glow of sunlight reflected from the Earth onto the Moon's dark side, strongest near new Moon. Off by default. |
The Moon is shown with north up, as you see it from the northern hemisphere. If yours stands on its side, use Display rotation in the settings.
3. Lunar eclipses
Lunaria predicts every lunar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 by itself, and when one happens it shows it as it happens. First the penumbra, a gentle dimming. Then the umbra takes a dark bite with a sharp edge. In a total eclipse the whole Moon turns copper red, lit only by sunlight bent through the Earth's atmosphere.
When an eclipse is under 45 days away, the Lunar eclipse card joins the almanac. It counts down the days, gives the times of the partial and total phases in your local time, and says whether the Moon will be above your horizon to see it.
4. The almanac cards
Every so often (hourly, unless you change it) Lunaria shows a few cards for about nine seconds each, then returns to the Moon. Cards that have nothing to say are skipped.
| Card | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Tonight | The date, how much of the Moon is lit, its phase, the next moonrise and moonset, its distance, and anything special: a perigee, a coming full Moon, an eclipse. |
| Keepsake | One of your keepsake nights (section 5). |
| Coming up | The next new, first-quarter, full and last-quarter Moons with dates and times. Full Moons get their traditional names (Harvest, Hunter's, Wolf…). It also marks supermoons, micromoons and Blue Moons, and the next eclipse. |
| Lunar eclipse | When one is near or happening (section 3). |
| On the terminator | The best-placed craters and mountains where the Sun is just rising or setting tonight, marked on a small Moon, with what they are named for. Named features come from the International Astronomical Union. |
| Impact flashes | The 300 meteoroid strikes NASA filmed on the Moon's night side from 2005 to 2014, mapped. It appears around the peaks of the major meteor showers and now and then otherwise. |
| In your sky | Where the Moon is now: its height and compass direction on a sky dial, or, if it's below the horizon, when and where it rises. |
| Tidal pull | The combined pull of the Moon and Sun on the oceans, from neap to spring, and when it next peaks. King tides are flagged when a spring tide falls near perigee. Coasts respond a day or two later and by different amounts, so this shows the cause, not your local tide table. |
To see the cards at any time, use Show the almanac cards now on the settings page. To turn them off, set Almanac cards to Off.
5. Keepsake nights
A keepsake night is a date that matters to you: a birth, a wedding, a first date. Lunaria knows the Moon of that night exactly.
- Add up to five. On the settings page, fill in Keepsake night #1, and more under More keepsake nights. Choose the month, then type the day and year (any year from 1900 to 2099), the time that evening, and an optional label.
- Keepsake mode freezes the display on night #1, with its label engraved beneath the Moon. It needs no internet and stays there until you switch back to Live.
- In Live mode the Keepsake card brings your nights back in turn. It shows the Moon as it was, its phase and how full it was, and counts down to the anniversary. On the night itself it says how many years ago it was. It also tells you the year that same Moon returns on that date, usually nineteen years later.
To remove a night, clear its year and save.
6. Settings
Open http://lunaria.local on the same WiFi. Changes apply as soon as you save; only
a WiFi change restarts Lunaria.
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Mode | Live (tonight's Moon) or Keepsake (freeze on keepsake night #1). |
| Keepsake nights | Up to five dates, times and labels (section 5). |
| WiFi | Add a network; Lunaria remembers three. Home (WPA2) and work or school (802.1X, with a username) networks both work. |
| Motion | Real time; Gentle, a month of phases in about ten minutes; or Fast, a month in under a minute. |
| Brightness | Low, Medium or High. |
| Auto-dim at night | On by default: dims after sunset where you are. |
| Earthshine | Off by default. |
| Almanac cards | Every 30 minutes, every hour (default), every 3 hours, or Off for a pure Moon. |
| Display rotation | 0°, 90°, 180° or 270°, to suit how it stands. |
| Your location | Automatic (approximate, from your internet address) or Manual (type latitude and longitude; nothing is looked up). |
| Time zone | Automatic from your location, or pick one if the clock is wrong (and always with a manual location). |
At the bottom of the page: Run the demo (tonight, then a whole month in about a minute), Show the almanac cards now, and Forget WiFi & reopen setup.
7. Moving to a new WiFi
If Lunaria can't reach any saved network for a few minutes, it reopens its
Lunaria-Setup hotspot by itself. To force setup without the settings page, switch it
off, then on for about two seconds, three times in a row. On the second power-on you'll see
Setup recovery 2/3; on the third the setup screen appears. Your saved networks are kept.
8. Troubleshooting
| Problem | Try |
|---|---|
| The setup page doesn't open | Stay connected to Lunaria-Setup and browse to 192.168.4.1. |
lunaria.local doesn't load |
Use the address Lunaria showed after joining your WiFi, or find it in your router's device list. |
| The time or rise/set times are off by an hour | Set Time zone to your zone instead of Automatic. |
| No moonrise/moonset or sky card | Lunaria hasn't found your location yet; give it a minute online. |
| Screen too bright at night | Leave Auto-dim on, or lower Brightness. |
| It's showing the wrong Moon | Check that Mode is Live, not Keepsake. |
9. Privacy
Lunaria has no account and stores nothing in any cloud. On your WiFi it asks only for the time and for your approximate location, which CosNFX's own server works out from your internet address and does not log. It uses the location for your time zone, moonrise and moonset, the sky card, eclipse visibility and evening dimming. To share nothing at all, set Your location to Manual and type your latitude and longitude (and pick your time zone). The Moon itself is computed on the device and needs no network.
10. Specifications
| Display | 1.75″ round AMOLED, 466 × 466 |
| Processor | ESP32-S3, dual-core 240 MHz, 8 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash |
| Moon data | Clementine albedo (USGS/NASA) and LRO LOLA relief (NASA), public domain; feature names from the IAU/USGS Gazetteer |
| Astronomy | Computed on the device; checked against JPL Horizons, NASA's lunar eclipse catalogue, the US Naval Observatory and NOAA |
| Range | Any date 1900–2099 |
| Connectivity | 2.4 GHz WiFi, WPA2 Personal and Enterprise (802.1X) |
| Power | USB-C, 5 V |
Credits and licences: notices.