Nightward / Blog
The Nightward blog
How the night sky actually works — what your latitude lets you see, what a star map is really computing, and how to print one so it looks like something worth hanging.
- What Did the Night Sky Look Like on the Day I Was Born? You can find out exactly. Your birth date, time and city are enough to reconstruct the real positions of every visible star that night — here is how it works, and what you need to know before you look it up.
- Why the Stars Look Different Depending on Where You Live Two people can look up on the same night and see genuinely different skies. Latitude decides which half of the sky you can ever see, and the rule behind it is simple enough to work out for your own city.
- How to Print and Frame a Star Map So It Looks Like a Real Print Print size, paper, resolution and framing — the practical decisions that separate a star map that looks like a gift from one that looks like a page off a printer.
Looking something up?
The city pages give the worked answer for seventy-nine places — which constellations never set from there, which never rise, and how dark it gets at midsummer. Or start from a date and see the sky it belongs to.