Every astronomer and space enthusiast has been there: you need to quickly calculate where Venus will appear in tonight’s sky, determine the moon’s current phase, or generate planetary positions for your observation planning. Traditional astronomy libraries often come bloated with dependencies and complex APIs that make simple celestial calculations feel like rocket science. Enter pracstro, a compact Rust library that transforms astronomical computations into elegant, lightning-fast operations.
This zero-dependency powerhouse delivers remarkable performance—calculating moon phases in just 558 nanoseconds and Jupiter’s coordinates in under a microsecond, making it orders of magnitude faster than comparable libraries. Built around four intuitive modules (time, coordinates, solar system objects, and lunar calculations), pracstro lets you effortlessly convert between coordinate systems, track planetary positions, and compute lunar illumination phases. The API reads like natural language: simply call VENUS.location(date).horizon() to get Venus’s altitude and azimuth from your location, or MOON.phase(date) to determine how much of the lunar surface is illuminated.
Whether you’re building planetarium software, mobile astronomy apps, or research tools for variable star observations, pracstro’s philosophy of simplicity without sacrifice makes it perfect for real-time applications. Its algorithms are designed to be portable across programming languages while maintaining the precision needed for serious astronomical work—proving that sometimes the most elegant solutions come in the smallest packages.
⭐ Stars: 4
💻 Language: Rust
🔗 Repository: oliverkwebb/pracstro