the lab

Star Map

a planetarium for this place and minute

Forty thousand real stars, the Milky Way, the planets and the moon's true face, and the nebulae worth finding, for any place and hour.

Drag to look around, pinch or scroll to zoom, and run the clock forward or back. Tap any star, planet, nebula or the moon to ask about it; the finder flies you to the moon, the planets and the sun. The bright stars stay through daylight, the ground thins when you look beneath the horizon, and the whole sky can be kept for offline nights in the mountains.

The stars are the Hipparcos catalogue (ESA), the Milky Way is NASA's map of the galaxy's diffuse light built from Gaia (NASA/GSFC SVS · ESA/Gaia/DPAC), the moon's face is the LROC WAC mosaic (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University), and the sun, moon and planets are reckoned on this page from NOAA and JPL arithmetic, good to a minute or two. Your place is kept only in this browser and shared with the light almanac.

free, no accounts, always — if it earns a place in your day, you can buy me a coffee.