Our Solar System

The night sky on any date

What was in the sky that night?

Pick a place and a date from 1800 to 2200 and see the real sky above it: every star you could see, the planets, and the Moon in its phase.

Keep it as a print · £19What was up
The sky over your townTonight at 22:00

What was up.

Working out the sky…

    Keep this sky as a star map print

    The designer opens on the same place and minute. Add your words, choose a style and a size, download a free preview, and buy the print file at 300 dpi when it is right.

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    Four nights from history.

    The sky over four public moments, worked out by the same engine that draws the chart above.1

    The first step on the Moon, over Houston

    Houston · Sunday 20 July 1969, 21:56 CDT

    NASA's account has Neil Armstrong ready to step onto the Moon at 10:56 p.m. Eastern time, 21:56 on the clocks in Houston, the city his first words from the surface were for: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."15 Above Houston that minute, the Moon he stood on was a crescent in the evening sky.

    • The Moon, 35% litA waxing crescent, half way up in the south-west.
    • MarsHalf way up in the south.
    • JupiterHalf way up in the west.
    • 4,288 starsEvery star to magnitude 6.5 above the horizon, the brightest of them Arcturus.

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    The night the Berlin Wall opened

    Berlin · Thursday 9 November 1989, 23:30 CET

    By half past eleven on 9 November 1989 the commander of the Bornholmer Straße crossing had given way, and his guards were opening the checkpoint and letting people through with little or no checking.16 The sky over the city held a waxing gibbous Moon.

    • The Moon, 84% litA waxing gibbous, half way up in the south-west.
    • JupiterHalf way up in the east.
    • 4,457 starsEvery star to magnitude 6.5 above the horizon, the brightest of them Sirius.

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    The first minute of 2000, at Greenwich

    Greenwich · Saturday 1 January 2000, 00:00 GMT

    Midnight on Greenwich Mean Time, over the home of the Prime Meridian, the line of longitude zero.17 The Moon was below the horizon, and Jupiter and Saturn stood together in the west.

    • The Moon was below the horizonA waning crescent, 27% lit, still to rise or already set.
    • JupiterHalf way up in the west.
    • SaturnHalf way up in the west.
    • 4,456 starsEvery star to magnitude 6.5 above the horizon, the brightest of them Sirius.

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    The London 2012 opening ceremony

    London · Friday 27 July 2012, 21:00 BST

    The ceremony began at 21:00 on Friday 27 July 2012 in the Olympic Stadium.18 Over London the Sun was down, a Moon two thirds lit stood in the south, and Mars and Saturn were in the south-west.

    • The Moon, 67% litA waxing gibbous, half way up in the south.
    • MarsHalf way up in the south-west.
    • SaturnHalf way up in the south-west.
    • 4,178 starsEvery star to magnitude 6.5 above the horizon, the brightest of them Arcturus.

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    How the sky is worked out.

    From a place and a minute to the stars

    The time you choose is read on the clock of the place, summer time included, and turned into universal time with the world time zone database.7 Places come from the towns of GeoNames, or from your own position if you share it.8

    From there the planets are placed by the VSOP87 theory,4 the Moon by the lunar theory in Jean Meeus' Astronomical Algorithms,5 and the stars from the HYG catalogue, each moved by its own motion to your date.6 The engine allows for the slow wobble of the Earth's axis and for the air bending starlight near the horizon.

    We test it against JPL's Horizons system and the US Naval Observatory: the planets land within 3 arcseconds, the Moon within 12 and the bright navigational stars within 1.5.1,2,3 To check a night yourself, open the same moment in a planetarium program such as Stellarium.11

    Reading the chart

    The chart is the whole sky above the place: the point straight overhead in the middle, the horizon round the edge, north at the top and east on the left, as a sky map held above your head.

    It shows every star to magnitude 6.5, the 88 constellation figures with the brightest stars named,14 the Milky Way from NASA's maps built on the Gaia survey,9 every planet above the horizon, and the Moon drawn from a map of its real face, lit from the Sun's direction so its phase is the phase it showed.

    The sky on the day you were born

    Search for the town you were born in, set the date, and use the time on your birth record if you have it. If you only know the day, try the first dark hour: the stars turn through the night, while the Moon's phase and the planets change little within a few hours.

    The same works for any night you want to remember: a wedding, the night you met, a first night in a new home. When you find it, keep it as a print.

    More of the sky, live

    For tonight, see which planets are visible tonight and the Moon's phase today. To stand under any of these skies and look round, open it in Astronomy mode, our online planetarium.

    Questions about the night sky on a date.

    What did the night sky look like on the day I was born?

    Put in the town you were born in, the date, and the time on your birth record if you have it. The chart above redraws at once, and the line under it names the planets that were up, how much of the Moon was lit and how many stars stood above the horizon.

    Is this the real sky or an illustration?

    The real sky, worked out for the place and the minute. The planets come from the VSOP87 theory, the Moon from Jean Meeus' lunar theory and the stars from the HYG catalogue, and in our tests against JPL's Horizons system and the US Naval Observatory the planets land within 3 arcseconds and the Moon within 12.1,2,3

    How far back can I go?

    Any date from 1 January 1800 to the end of 2200. The local clock rules come from the world time zone database, whose own notes say its entries before 1970 are often uncertain, so for older dates check the zone shown under the chart.7

    Does it show the weather or the clouds?

    No. The chart shows the sky as it stood above the place, as if the night were clear and dark. It cannot know whether it was cloudy, and it leaves out the glow of street lights.

    Why does the time matter?

    The sky turns through the night: stars rise in the east and set in the west, and the Moon and the planets move with them. Nine in the evening and three in the morning give different charts, so choose the minute you want to remember.

    Can I keep it as a print?

    Yes. Keep it as a print opens the star map designer with the same place and minute, where you add your words, choose a style and a size, and download a free preview. The print file is £19, a 300 dpi PNG for any printer.

    Is it free?

    Yes. Look up as many nights as you like, with nothing to sign up for. You only pay if you buy the print file.

    Find your nightStar map prints

    Sources

    1. Our own test of the chart against [2] and [3] for four reference moments (tests/prints-chart.test.js in our code, October 2026): planets within 3″, the Moon within 12″, the navigational stars within 1.5″; under 0.03 mm on a 50 × 70 cm print.
    2. JPL Horizons System, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons
    3. Astronomical Applications Department, US Naval Observatory. aa.usno.navy.mil/data
    4. Bretagnon, P. and Francou, G. (1988), Planetary theories in rectangular and spherical variables: VSOP87 solutions, Astronomy and Astrophysics 202, 309. CDS VI/81
    5. Meeus, J. (1998), Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd edition, Willmann-Bell.
    6. HYG Database v4.2, astronexus, CC BY-SA 4.0. astronexus.com/hyg
    7. The IANA Time Zone Database and its notes on how reliable old entries are. iana.org/time-zones, theory.html
    8. GeoNames, CC BY 4.0. geonames.org
    9. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, Deep Star Maps 2020; Gaia DR2: ESA/Gaia/DPAC. svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4851
    10. Stellarium, free planetarium software. stellarium.org
    11. d3-celestial © 2015 Olaf Frohn, BSD 3-Clause, its constellation lines after the IAU and Sky & Telescope charts (CC BY 4.0). github.com/ofrohn/d3-celestial
    12. NASA History, "July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind": "At 10:56 p.m. EDT Armstrong is ready to plant the first human foot on another world." nasa.gov
    13. Fall of the Berlin Wall, Wikipedia, read 14 October 2026: "at 22:45 (alternatively given as 23:30) on 9 November, Harald Jäger, commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing, yielded". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall
    14. Royal Museums Greenwich, "What is the Prime Meridian, and why is it in Greenwich?". rmg.co.uk
    15. 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, Wikipedia, read 14 October 2026: it "took place on the evening of Friday 27 July 2012 in the Olympic Stadium, London" and "began at 21:00 BST". en.wikipedia.org

    The chart is drawn from the HYG Database v4.2 (CC BY-SA 4.0), constellation figures from d3-celestial (BSD 3-Clause), the Milky Way from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio with Gaia DR2 from ESA/Gaia/DPAC, the Moon from NASA's CGI Moon Kit, and places from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). No endorsement by NASA, ESA or any data provider is implied. Every source is on our credits page. Privacy.