Get planet positions as sensors

[Madelena]

Since this integration is already calculating the positions of the planets, it would be nice to have it provide sensors for the:

• current visibility
• current direction
• current altitude
• today's and next rise times and directions
• today's and next meridian times and directions, and
• today's and next set times and directions

of each planet, dwarf planet, the sun, and the moon.

An example would be something like this: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/usa/new-york

[partofthething]

Excellent idea! We definitely already calculate direction and altitude, so that would indeed be relatively easy to expose. Rise, median, and set times would take a little more computation to follow the curves and estimate when those happen. There's a utility in skyfield to do this (https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/almanac.html#risings-and-settings) so that would be easy enough to code up as well. I'd be interested in supporting this or reviewing a PR if anyone wants to contribute it.

[Tom-ahawk]

Please consider making an “down sized” integration which creates a sensor with basic information about the moons position (azimuth, elevation etc.) and phase. Or the possibility to select in the integration interface which planet to select (ex. just the moon). - Maybe this will then make the CPU load lower ?
Then this sensor(s) can be used in other cards.

[mdisabato]

@Tom-ahawk,

HA has an integration that does this already. Also AstroWeather (https://github.com/mawinkler/astroweather) will provide you with a huge amount of data, not just the moon phase.