What’s on your star map
The sky exactly as it was above a place at a given moment: nearly 9,000 stars in their real colours, the constellations with their names, the Milky Way, the Moon with its phase that night and the planets that were up.
We also mark the star of that day: the star whose light set out on that date and is reaching Earth about now. It turns a map of a night into a small story about light.
Printing it
Choose A4, A3, 30 × 40 or 50 × 70 cm and download the PDF: it is sized to the paper, ready for a print shop or a home printer. For very large prints use the SVG, which stays sharp at any size. The square, 4:5 and phone formats are made for sharing and for your lock screen.
Questions
- Is the star map accurate?
- Yes. Positions are computed for the exact place and time, including the daylight saving time in force then, from a catalogue built on Hipparcos measurements. The Moon and planets are calculated with Astronomy Engine.
- Is it really free? Is there a watermark?
- It is free, with no sign-up and no watermark on the sky. A small site address sits at the bottom of the poster.
- I don’t know the exact time. What should I choose?
- Leave it at 22:00. The sky turns about 15 degrees an hour, so the time changes which stars are up; any evening hour gives a full, true night sky for that date.
- Can I make one for a wedding, an anniversary or a birth?
- Yes: any date, any place. Add a title and a dedication, and pick one of four styles: Night, Paper, Gold or White.