What used to be Attilla Danko's
Boring Home Page

Just the Links

TOC:
Clear Sky Charts
Seeing Observations Database
How to buy a telescope
The Four Observers
Observing-Expletive Scale
(Not for minors)

Off Site:
BigDob
Ottawa Astronomy Friends

Clear Dark Sky / Clear Sky Charts Update 2026-05-12

For those who still don't know Attilla Danko died 2024-11-28.
If you have any stories/anecdotes/memories of Attilla, please email them to danko@pobox.com .

Before Attilla died, he had intended that this site would die with him. I didn't agree and got him to show me how to add new charts - mostly so that I could do some of the day-to-day work while he was in hospital. I didn't know about Widow Brain before he died and had foolishly thought I'd be able to fairly easily keep the site running. It turns out that reading and writing code while your eyes are blurry from tears is too hard. Even just reading the emails is hard, so I've backed off to only doing that once per week.

Since Attilla died, there were 15 serious issues that could have - or in some cases did - take the site offline. And requests for new charts at the rate of about one or two a week, each one of which requires code.

During one of the darker parts - when the site was repeatedly being taken down by hackers - Rick Bassham of darkdragonsastro stepped up and offered clear detailed concrete steps on a possible change to solve the problem. And he kindly offered to take over running the site on a permanent basis.

As Attilla's sole beneficiary (including all intellectual property) and executor of his estate, I've decided to take Rick up on his offer.

There is still a LOT of work I need to do to be able to properly transition the site. But I still have serious estate issues that need my more immediate attention. For all the kind people who have tried to offer me sponsorships - thank you, but please direct your offers to Rick instead.


-Ingrid
PS. Yes, I'm still adding new charts as requests come in.
PPS. Yes, I know the smoke maps are broken.
PPPS. No, I haven't yet found where Attilla stored the archives that his code collects.


I've left Attilla's original description about the charts here below. (The "some colleagues"... turned out to be just me.)

Colleagues

Because of declining health, I recently asked some colleauges to help with the great many mails I get from chart users and sponsors. So someone other than Attilla Danko may reply. Also, although in the past I've been able service chart and sponsor requests within a day (sometimes within an hour) that might be considerably extended. Your patience is appreciated.

Me

I'm a retired software weenie, that's the technical term, and an amateur astronomer.

I never had a use for a personal website until I heard about the computer language Python. I figured any language named after Monty Python's Flying Circus had to be cool. But to learn Python, I needed a problem to write code for. I found it tedious to add 5 in my head to convert UTC to EST in using the astronomy forecast maps at CMC, so I started writing code.

Next thing I know, I'm writing optical character recognition code, reverse-engineering map transforms, writing javascripts and web databases, writing failover and load-sharing code for windows and generating Clear Sky Charts. Because of the very cool numerical model Allan Rahill (of CMC) wrote, the Clear Sky Charts turn out to be just about the most accurate forecasting device for astronomers. Then word got around.

I'm generating clear sky charts for >3000+ observatories and observing sites in North America and having an absolute blast. I wish knew how to turn clear sky charts into a livelihood so I could do it full time.

There are a few other things on this website that largely came about from the charts:

  • I wrote the Ottawa Astronomy Weather page to explain to my fellow observers in Ottawa why the local forecasts were so bad and where to get real astronomer's forecasts.

  • I wrote the Seeing Observations Database so Allan Rahill could get real data on astronomical seeing in order to tune his numerical seeing model.

  • I answer a lot of email. In a pitiful attempt to stem the flood, here are some of the questions i've answered:

And then there is just plain sillyness:

  • Many fine nights observing with buddies, who were also Monty Python fans, cause me to write (in a moment of weakness), a translation of the classic monty python sketch, The Four Observers, into the language of amateur astronomers.

  • Many fine nights observing with buddies who like to express themselves led me to realize that one could rate astronomical views by listening to people swear at the eyepiece. In another moment of weakness (is there a pattern here?), I wrote the Expletive Scale (Not suitable for kids) of astronomical observations.

I've come to appreciate the social aspects of the astronomy hobby. So I deliberately created a few places where astronomers could yak: