chase is counting
The moon

– –

Moonrise--:--
Moonset--:--
– –

–

–

– –

–

The thirty nights · Hilo to Muku
This night

Cultural significance

–

Anahulu

–

–

–

–

–

Traditional guidance

Fishing · lawaiʻa

–

Planting · mahiʻai

–

Spiritual practice

–

The lunar month

–

–

–

On iPhone

Ke Ala Mahina

The same calendar as an iPhone app – with a home-screen widget and one gentle notification a night, so the moon finds you instead of the other way round.

Download on the App Store
Sources & reckoning

Night names and dates follow the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s Oʻahu calendar (after Clarice Taylor, 1995). The Hawaiian lunar calendar varies by island and moku, and by tradition – your kūpuna’s calendar may differ.

Cultural guidance and the kapu nights draw on the Malo and Kepelino traditions. Names use modern standardized ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi spelling. A few nights carry two scholarly renderings – the toggle at the top switches between the WPRFMC spelling, which matches this calendar’s dates, and the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s Hōkūleʻa rendering.

The moon night, the illumination, and the moonrise and moonset times are all computed in your browser from Meeus’ algorithms – nothing about the moon is fetched. Rise and set are reckoned for Honolulu unless you hand over your location. The optional cloud-cover forecast is the one thing this page asks the network for; it comes from Open-Meteo.

Adapted from Ke Ala Mahina (“The Moon’s Path”), an iPhone app of the same calendar.

about

chase is counting keeps Kaulana Mahina, the Hawaiian lunar calendar. The month is not thirty numbered days but thirty named nights, Hilo to Muku, each one carrying its own meaning and its own instruction – which nights to fish, which to plant, which to leave alone. Three anahulu of ten nights each: Hoʻonui growing, Poepoe full, Hoʻēmi waning. This page tells you which night it is right now, and what that night is for.

It opens on tonight. Arrow keys, a swipe, or the strip of thirty move you through the month; any night can be linked directly. A few nights carry two scholarly spellings, so the toggle switches between the WPRFMC rendering – which this calendar's dates follow – and the Polynesian Voyaging Society's.

I ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope. The time in front is the time behind – we face the past, and back into the future. A calendar this old is exactly that: the old reckoning, carried forward into tonight.

The stack. Nothing about the moon is fetched. The night, the illumination, and the moonrise and moonset are all computed in your browser from Meeus' algorithms – the rise and set by walking the moon's altitude minute by minute through your own local day and interpolating the horizon crossings. The moon is an SVG whose terminator is a half-ellipse re-solved for each phase, the starfield a canvas, the share card a canvas the page draws itself. The single request this page makes is an optional cloud-cover forecast from Open-Meteo, and only for tonight. One self-contained file, system type, no libraries.

Adapted from Ke Ala Mahina, an iPhone app of the same calendar. Sources and the limits of this reckoning are set out at the foot of the page – the calendar varies by island and by ʻohana, and yours may differ.

I'm Chase Conching – a designer/developer in Honolulu making a series of small experiments at chase.is.

chase@chase.is · github · linkedin