ASCIIMoon: The moon's phase live in ASCII art

(asciimoon.com)

268 points zayat | 3 comments | 01 Jul 25 10:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.47s | source

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SlowTao ◴[02 Jul 25 21:41 UTC] No.44449154[source]▶

While I love the ASCII art, yeah... thats not how the moon phase works. At half moon it should be exactly half occluded, so like it was cut in half, not just a weird circle cut out.

This is something that partially bothered me about GTA San Andreas on Ps2. They used the same trick as here but I would give them a pass because it was just a small detail on a large simulation on an already very limited system.

There are some great bones here on the site, just need to tweak the shadow and it can be a 10 out of 10.

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thih9 ◴[03 Jul 25 12:42 UTC] No.44454424[source]▶

>>44449154 #

This is also the standard way to present moon phases in watch complications:

> One of the objections raised to a conventional moonphase display, which shows the visible part of the Moon via an aperture in the dial, is that it is not an accurate representation of what you see when you actually look at the Moon over the course of a month.

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-beautifully-pointless-...

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1. Joker_vD ◴[03 Jul 25 16:27 UTC] No.44456703[source]▶

>>44454424 #

Well, let's hope nobody drills a hole in the Moon (or blows the Moon up) in the next couple thousands of years, for the sake of those watches' usability.

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2. thih9 ◴[03 Jul 25 20:21 UTC] No.44458848[source]▶

>>44456703 (TP) #

It’s actually safe to do that, watch owners would be distracted by global cataclysms ;)

> Tides would be much smaller (…) But the movement of tides underpins the balance of ecosystems the world over, and an impact that widespread would cause global biological collapse across oceans and, in turn, the whole Earth.

3. shagie ◴[04 Jul 25 00:12 UTC] No.44460156[source]▶

>>44456703 (TP) #

> let's hope nobody drills a hole in the Moon

https://what-if.xkcd.com/46/ - while it deals more with the Earth (which has a more molten core), its still applicable. There's still molten material ( https://science.nasa.gov/moon/composition/ ) but it's a lot deeper.

> (or blows the Moon up)

As a classic Neal Stephenson (great world building, good plot... and it ends)... Seveneves starts with:

> THE MOON BLEW UP WITHOUT WARNING AND FOR NO APPARENT reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero.

... and given the book and the "what happens"... a watch surviving (much less keeping the phase of the moon) would be impressive.

There's also the Dr. Who take ("Spoilers") https://youtu.be/pHOnGSFzd3Y

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