Release v7.0

weewx-celestial 7.0

A redesign release: the Celestial page is rebuilt around a single live
panel, the Geocentric, and the seven embedded weewx-skyfield sky-chart
panels and almanac-table cards are gone. Those panels duplicated
weewx-skyfield's own Sky page; this page is now purely what only it can
be — the live instrument, where everything on screen moves. Upgrading is
NOT drop-in: uninstall first as always, add two loop-data fields, and — if
a user.celestial.Celestial entry still lingers in data_services from
2.x — remove it, because the stub that tolerated it is gone.

What's new

• The Geocentric. Earth at the center; the sun, moon, all eight
  planets and Proxima Centauri placed by compass bearing (plan view, east
  to the right, like a radar or wind rose) and by log distance — rings
  step ×10 from inside the moon's orbit to Proxima at the rim, so the
  emptiness between Pluto and the nearest star is drawn to honest scale.
  The moon renders at its true phase with a silver rim (so a new moon
  never vanishes), bodies below the horizon dim and go dashed, and every
  dot drags an hour-long motion trail.
• Distance odometers that actually tick. The roster beside the dial
  gives each body a distance readout in your report's units, its raw
  astronomical-unit value, its altitude, and its radial rate — and the
  page derives each body's true motion from consecutive loop packets,
  advancing the readouts every second between refreshes. Mercury can
  recede ~28 km every second while Saturn approaches at the same pace;
  even Proxima Centauri's odometer ticks (Earth's own orbital motion).
  Every readout re-anchors to truth on each loop refresh, and freezes
  rather than inventing data if the feed goes stale.
• A truthful footer. The credit line is generated for whatever
  almanac actually serves the page: the full Skyfield/DE421/Hipparcos
  credit only when Proxima is served, a generic extended-almanac credit
  for PyEphem, and a built-in-almanac credit otherwise.
• A leaner field set. The page reads 37 loop-data fields
  (az/alt/earth_distance per body, the moon-phase fields, and
  current.dateTime.raw), down from 58.
• Removed: the sky dome, solar year, lunation, sun path, orrery,
  analemma and rise/set-ribbons panels (see weewx-skyfield's Sky page for
  all of them), the sun/moon/distances table cards, the day strip, the
  countdown chips, the header moonbox, the CelestialSkyPage search-list
  shim, and the 6.x Celestial service stub.

Action required when upgrading

1. weectl extension uninstall celestial, then install 7.0.
2. If user.celestial.Celestial still appears under data_services in
   [Engine] [[Services]] of weewx.conf (a 2.x leftover that 6.x
   tolerated with a stub), remove it — with the stub gone, a stale
   entry will keep weewxd from starting.
3. Add almanac.proxima_centauri.az, almanac.proxima_centauri.alt to the
   [LoopData] [[Include]] fields line (every other 7.0 field is already
   in a 6.0 line). The 6.0 entries this skin no longer reads — rise/sets,
   twilights, ra/dec, equinox/solstice, almanac.moon_phase,
   almanac.moon_index, sun visible-time — can stay for your own pages or
   be trimmed; the README has the full 37-entry list.
   Upgrading from 5.x or earlier instead: run the bundled
   --migrate-loopdata-fields utility per the README.
4. Restart WeeWX. (This also refreshes the deployed celestial.css —
   CopyGenerator re-copies copy_once files on every report first-run —
   and the page version-tags the stylesheet URL so browsers refetch it.)

Requirements

• Python 3.9 or later, WeeWX 5.2 or later
• weewx-loopdata 5.0
  or later (evaluates the almanac fields)
• weewx-skyfield
  strongly recommended: it computes every position and distance the panel
  runs on, and only its almanac serves Proxima Centauri. PyEphem serves
  everything but Proxima; with neither, the page generates but the panel
  shows an install hint.
• Skyfield and NumPy are not required by this extension.

Installing/upgrading

Download weewx-celestial.zip from this release, then follow the
action-required steps above (fresh installs: just
weectl extension install weewx-celestial.zip, add the README's fields
line, and restart WeeWX).