STAR GAZER

About Star Gazer

A live view of the night sky above Sydney, calculated for 33°52′S 151°12′E and redrawn every frame. Type any city in the world and press Show Night Sky to stand somewhere else.

Scan the night sky: tap Scan the Night Sky Now, point your phone's camera at the sky, and the constellations, bright stars and planets you're aiming at are labelled live and tracked as you move. Uses the compass and tilt sensors, so it's for phones and tablets.
38,000 stars down to magnitude 8, each in its true colour. Every one is hoverable, with its catalogue number and magnitude.
All 88 constellations, with figures and names.
1,300 deep-sky objects: galaxies, globular clusters, open clusters and nebulae, drawn at their real size and shape.
469 named stars plus about 2,800 Greek-letter and Flamsteed designations.
Click a constellation (its lines, name or one of its stars) to light it up in white. Click again, or press Esc, to clear.
Moon, Sun and planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) positioned from orbital elements, with the Moon's true phase and lit side.
Zoom up to 24×. Fainter stars, star labels and deep-sky objects appear as you go deeper.
Night timeline from 6pm to 7am showing twilight, full darkness and when the Moon is up.
Any city in the world: type a city and press Show Night Sky. Times follow that city's own time zone.
The night you were born: pick any date back to 1900 to see that night's sky, Moon and planets.
Your Moon returns: after you pick a birthday, see which upcoming birthday has the Moon closest to how it looked the night you were born.
Print: a classic black-on-white A4 star chart for tonight or any date and time you choose. Also from the ↓ Star chart button and your birthday card.
Works offline: the whole catalogue is built into the page.

HIP: Hipparcos catalogue number. Hipparcos was a European Space Agency satellite (1989–1993) that measured the positions and distances of about 118,000 stars.
Magnitude: Brightness on a reverse scale: lower is brighter. Sirius is −1.46; the naked-eye limit from a dark site is about 6, so magnitude 8 is roughly six times fainter than you can see unaided.

V21 01.11.26 · Star data: Hipparcos via d3-celestial (BSD-3)

by Hamilton Roder

Current location: Sydney, Australia · 33°52′S 151°12′E

Print a star chart

A classic black-on-white chart of the whole sky over Sydney, ready to print on A4.

Day Month Year

Time

Times are evening of the chosen date through to dawn the next morning.

The night you were born

Enter your date of birth to see the sky over Sydney as it was that night: the stars, the Moon in its true phase, and the planets where they stood.

Day Month Year

Opens at 10pm on the evening of your birthday. Drag the timeline to move through the night.

1.0×

Constellation

✦ The night you were born

Tonight --

Speed

Look

Show

STAR GAZER by Hamilton Roder Star data: Hipparcos / d3-celestial (BSD-3)

Visible now

You are standing in Sydney. Bottom edge is the horizon, top edge is straight overhead. Drag to turn or tilt, scroll or pinch to zoom; Reset view puts you back.