Enter your birth date and the sky dome turns to the night you were born: the planets above the horizon, the brightest stars, the Moon in its real phase and that week’s meteor shower.
Your birth details
Tonight’s sky over New York
Enter your birth date and the dome turns to the night you were born.
How we calculate
The dome is the sky you would see looking up from your birthplace: the centre is the point straight overhead (the zenith), the edge is the horizon, north is at the top and east on the left, like a star chart. We draw the stars in a stereographic projection, which keeps the shapes of the constellations.
The positions of the planets, the Moon and the Sun come from the open-source astronomy-engine library (checked against NASA JPL to about an arcminute); the height above the horizon is corrected for atmospheric refraction. The Moon’s phase comes from the same calculation as the site’s other tools, Jean Meeus’s formulas.
The stars come from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue (5th edition): more than 900 stars brighter than magnitude 4.5, easy to see with the naked eye, plus the ends of the constellation lines. Meteor shower peaks are the International Meteor Organization’s average values.
Without a time the sky is drawn at 9 pm local time; without a place, over New York. Everything is calculated in your browser: your birth date, time and place are never sent to us or to any server.
Questions
- What do I see without a birth time?
- The evening of the day you were born, at 9 pm local time. The sky turns 15 degrees an hour; add the time and the dome turns to your moment, and the rising or setting stars may change.
- I was born in daylight. Why are the stars faint?
- Because the Sun was above the horizon at that moment. The stars were in place, but daylight hid them. The dome shows the real moment: the colour of the sky comes from the Sun’s height and the stars are drawn faintly.
- Why are some planets missing?
- We show only the five planets you can see with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Those below the horizon are listed on a separate line; that night they could not be seen from your place.
- Is this a birth chart?
- No. A birth chart places the planets on the circle of the zodiac signs; here we draw the sky itself, as you would have seen it stepping outside that night. Both start from the same moment of birth.