A star map you can step into
This is the real sky over a real place at a real minute. When the page opens it shows the sky above you right now, guessed from your connection; change the place, date and time to stand under any other night — the night you met, a wedding, the day someone was born — and look around it.
Stars are where they stood above that spot, the planets where they actually were, and the Moon at its true phase, lit from the side the Sun was on. Below the horizon is ground, because from there you couldn't have seen it. The colour of the sky follows the Sun: deep blue at night, twilight in the west after sunset, daylight when the Sun was up.
Why the hour matters
The sky turns once a day, so 9 pm and 3 am on the same date show different halves of it, and the same minute looks different from Sydney than from Chicago. Drag the time slider to watch it turn.
The light you're looking at is old
Tap a star and you'll see how far away it is and when the light reaching you that night set out. Light from Vega left it about 25 years earlier; light from many of the fainter stars set out centuries before anyone alive today was born.
Prints
Any moment can become a classic framed star chart: the whole sky in a circle, horizon to horizon, with your words beneath. Download a print-ready file free, at sizes from 8×10 to 24×36 inches.
Where the data comes from
Star positions and constellation figures: the Hipparcos-based catalog in d3-celestial (BSD licence, Olaf Frohn). Star distances: the HYG database v4.1 (CC BY-SA 4.0, astronexus). Planets, Moon and Sun: astronomy-engine (MIT). Place search: Open-Meteo geocoding. Distances to the farthest stars are uncertain by tens of percent.
The night we met · Birthday star map · Anniversary star map · Star map by date