Movement and alpha with only actionscript

im brand new to this forum. i know how to manually tween an object using a motion guide and to change the properties such as alpha just with frames and tweening, but it takes to long and im trying to figure out how to do it with only action script, like setting for example a sun to rise and set over a two minute period and the alpha change, its just takes to long manually tweening it. any help or links to other threads that will help me learn how to do this with actionscript would be greatly appreciated. thank you.