Devlog #01 – The Sky is Empty (For Now) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

Hey!

First devlog for SkyCanvas, my new CLI tool that maps real star constellations as ASCII art in your terminal. Think of it as a tiny planetarium, but without leaving your keyboard.

• Right now, it does exactly one thing: skycanvas list prints “TODO”. Not impressive yet, but the foundation is solid. Python, Typer, Rich – the same stack that worked for KeyGlow (see my other project).

What took the most time today?

• Data. Spent two hours manually researching and writing constellation data into a Python dictionary. Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Scorpius, Taurus, Gemini, Leo, Cygnus, Lyra, etc. each with their brightest stars, visibility months, and the connections that make them recognizable shapes in the night sky.

• I also managed to create a cool ASCII logo for SKYCANVAS, and make it displayable by “skycanvas logo” command.

• I’m not using an API for this – instead I’ll use the Skyfield library, which has a massive built-in star catalog and calculates positions mathematically. The manual data is just for the constellation shapes and metadata – Skyfield handles the actual astronomy.

• Right now my constellations.py looks like a giant dictionary with empty spots waiting to be filled.

• Next up: completing the data and turning those coordinates into actual ASCII art. Bresenham’s line algorithm, here I come. ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ