BJD_TDB plugin error: OSU no longer hosting astroutils

[dbenn]

The plugin returns HTML like this now:

    <p>I began the astroutils site in ~2010 when I was a graduate student at OSU. For 15 years after I graduated, OSU graciously continued to host them. Unfortunately, they are no longer able to do so. If you know of someone who might be willing to host them (they require a PHP script that calls out to the shell to run an IDL code on the server side), please contact me at <a href="mailto:jason.eastman@cfa.harvard.edu">jason.eastman@cfa.harvard.edu</a>.</p>

    <p>Meanwhile, here are some alternatives you might find useful:</p>

    <ul>
        <li>
            <strong>BJD calculator:</strong> <br>
            <a href="https://arbiter.nextastro.org/toolkit/bjd-converter">https://arbiter.nextastro.org/toolkit/bjd-converter</a><br>
            Note: this site had a ~10s error in the conversion that was fixed as of 2026-05-07
        </li>
...

[mpyat2]

Hi @dbenn

It's a pity. There is an alternative, though. An experimental build that includes the local converter is available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ctXp1Ddb5BK9YdFuUg1XCRW0Lm308BRi ; the description of the microservice is included in BJD_TDB%20Converter.pdf (Appendix). The required config file is here, the microservice is in https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/tree/master/install-files/PyMicroService . Currently, the config file must be placed manually in the .vstar directory and the localJDconverter.active switch must be set to 'y' (in the next release it can be enabled by default).

So, currently the user must (1) install Python and the flask package (2) create the .vstar directory and place vstar.properties in it (and set localJDconverter.active=y), run "python3 astro_time_convert.py" in terminal to start the local microservice and then launch VStar (actually, only configuration file must be in place before starting VStar, the microservice required for the BJD plugin only and can be started if required only).

Before the next release I will update the Windows installer (it will create the .vstar directory with vstar.properties). I will also update the documentation since the local service is now the primary one.

[dbenn]

I recalled that you had created this nice alternative.

Would be even better if we could host it somewhere, e.g. free tier of Google Cloud container support, or similar for AWS, or even an AWS Lambda.

Other options might be GraalVM (org.graalvm.polyglot) or Py4J.

[mpyat2]

Would be even better if we could host it somewhere, e.g. free tier of Google Cloud container support, or similar for AWS, or even an AWS Lambda.

Sounds interesting. I must investigate these options; currently, I'm a bit of a dummy when it comes to them. 🙂

I think that the first step would be to enable the local microservice by default, with the default URL http://localhost:5000/convert. Thus, we can get rid of .vstar/vstar.properties when using the default configuration. If the service is installed elsewhere, or if the user changes the port or path in astro_time_convert.py, .vstar/vstar.properties can be used to tell VStar what to do.

[dbenn]

Thanks @mpyat2