Astronomy API

Name: Astronomy API
Brand: Astronomy API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecData EnrichmentData Transformationbasic7 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Look up celestial body positions, generate moon phase or star chart images, and search astronomy catalogues for a given date and observer location.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the Astronomy API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Astronomy API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Astronomy API.

Compute the position of a specific celestial body for an observer's latitude, longitude, and date via /bodies/positions/{body}

List astronomical events such as transits and oppositions for a body over a date range using /bodies/events/{body}

Generate a printable star chart image for a given location and viewing date through POST /studio/star-chart

GET STARTED

Start building with Astronomy API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Astronomy API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Sky-Tonight Application

Consumer stargazing apps need to tell users which planets and bright stars are visible from their location right now. The Astronomy API answers this with /bodies/positions, returning altitude, azimuth, and constellation for each Solar System body relative to the observer, so the app can render a 'tonight's sky' summary without bundling its own ephemeris data. Latency is low enough for live mobile use.

Call GET /bodies/positions for latitude 51.5074, longitude -0.1278, on 2026-06-09 21:00 UTC and return the bodies with altitude greater than 10 degrees

Editorial Star Charts

News and educational sites publish weekly stargazing guides with charts. The Studio endpoints generate a star chart PNG for a chosen latitude, longitude, and timestamp, so an editorial CMS can pre-render charts for upcoming meteor showers or eclipses without an in-house astronomy stack. The chart returns as an image URL that can be embedded directly in articles.

POST to /studio/star-chart with latitude 40.7128, longitude -74.0060, observation date 2026-08-12 23:00, and view 'constellation: Perseus' to produce a chart image URL

Moon Phase Widget

Lifestyle and gardening apps display today's moon phase. The /studio/moon-phase endpoint renders the moon's illuminated fraction at the requested moment as a PNG, so the front end just embeds the returned URL. The same endpoint can be backdated for almanac-style content where a calendar shows the phase for each day of the month.

POST to /studio/moon-phase with date 2026-06-09 to retrieve the current phase image and percentage illuminated

Agent-Driven Astronomy Lookups via Jentic

Through Jentic, an AI agent answering an astronomy question searches by intent ('where is Mars tonight') and Jentic returns the matching /bodies/positions operation with its observer-location schema. Basic auth credentials are held in the Jentic vault, so the agent can call the API without seeing the application secret. This makes ad-hoc astronomy queries answerable inside any LLM-driven chat or workflow.

Use Jentic to search 'find Mars position tonight from my location', load the GET /bodies/positions/{body} schema, and execute with body='mars' and the user's coordinates

Key Endpoints

7 endpoints — the astronomy api returns positions of celestial bodies, predicts astronomical events, and renders star charts and moon phase images on demand.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/bodies

List all supported celestial bodies

GET

/bodies/positions

Get positions for all bodies for an observer

GET

/bodies/positions/{body}

Get position of a specific body

GET

/bodies/events/{body}

Get events such as rise and set times for a body

POST

/studio/star-chart

Generate a star chart image

POST

/studio/moon-phase

Generate a moon phase image

GET

/search

Search stars and deep space objects

GET

/bodies

List all supported celestial bodies

GET

/bodies/positions

Get positions for all bodies for an observer

GET

/bodies/positions/{body}

Get position of a specific body

GET

/bodies/events/{body}

Get events such as rise and set times for a body

POST

/studio/star-chart

Generate a star chart image

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Astronomy API basic auth credentials (application ID and secret) are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. The agent never sees the secret — Jentic constructs the Authorization header at call time.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent (e.g. 'find Mars position tonight') and Jentic returns the matching /bodies/positions operation with its observer-location parameters, so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing docs.

Time to first call

Direct integration: a few hours to wire basic auth, observer parameters, and image-URL handling. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes — search, load, execute.

FAQs

Specific to using Astronomy API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Astronomy API use?

The Astronomy API uses HTTP Basic Auth, with the application ID as the username and the application secret as the password. Through Jentic, both values are held in the Jentic vault and injected at call time, so they never appear in the agent's context.

Can I get the current position of a planet with the Astronomy API?

Yes. Call GET /bodies/positions/{body} with the body slug (for example 'mars'), the observer's latitude and longitude, and the date and time. The response returns the body's altitude, azimuth, and apparent constellation for that observer.

What are the rate limits for the Astronomy API?

Astronomy API plans publish per-minute and per-day quotas tied to the application key. The spec does not encode them, so check the dashboard for the active plan and back off on HTTP 429 responses.

How do I generate a star chart image through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'generate a star chart', load the POST /studio/star-chart schema, and execute with the observer location, observation time, and chart style. Jentic returns the image URL produced by the API so the agent can hand it back to the caller.

Can I search for deep space objects with the Astronomy API?

Yes. The GET /search endpoint accepts a free-text query and returns matching stars and deep space objects from the catalogue, including identifiers that can then be passed back to /bodies/positions or chart generation.

Which celestial bodies does the Astronomy API support?

The API covers the Sun, Moon, and the major Solar System planets via the /bodies endpoint, which lists every supported body slug to use in subsequent position and event calls.

Astronomy API

Connect the Astronomy API to your agent

Capabilities

Start building with Astronomy API

Use Cases

Key Endpoints

Why Jentic?

Related APIs

FAQs