moon-phase-background: script to update Background with current high res NASA image

[chrisbottle]

I wanted to automatically set the background to a picture of the current moon phase and couldn't find a program for that. Then I found this website: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004800/a004874/ from NASA that shows a high resolution image of the current moon phase (updated every hour).

So i wrote a simple bash script that downloads the current moon phase image from NASA and sets it as a desktop background in front of a background of stars and displays some information in the corner. (Illumination % and Cycle Age)

I then added a cron job(on my computer) to make it run the script and update every 12 hours. Also I added it to Startup Applications.

I am happy with the way this turned out so I thought I'd share it, so anybody else who is interested can try it out. Here is the Link to the github repository: https://github.com/desertplant/moon-phase-background

Let me know what you think.

PS. Oh i just remembered I made this for cinnamon. So if You don't have cinnamon you need to replace 2 lines in the code. (It should be really easy though.)

Here is an example picture of the current moon phase. (I had to shrink it)

[cool]

Hi, It's a nice script!
Xplanet, probably familiar with, is also excellent at display Solar objects.


Moon seen from Earth

[chrisbottle]

i did not know about that but it looks cool! i will check it out, thanks!