New Home Star Map — the Sky Over Your First Night There
A house becomes a home on a specific night. This tool rebuilds the sky over the new address on the evening you moved in — a housewarming gift that is literally rooted to the roof.
Make a new-home star map
Free, in your browser — no account, nothing uploaded. Both downloads are the complete chart: a vector SVG and a 300 dpi PNG, with nothing held back and nothing to buy.
Most star maps mark a moment between people. A new-home map marks a moment between you and a place — which is why the address, not just the city, is worth getting exactly right.
Getting the address and night right
- Use the house's coordinates. On a phone map, long-press the pin on the property and copy the latitude/longitude into the generator's place field. Truthfully the picture would look the same from across town — the stars barely move over a few streets — but for a home print it's worth being literal about which roof it is.
- Pick the night that felt like the start. The first night you slept there is the usual choice; the completion date or key-handover day also work. Use whichever day the house first felt like yours.
- Evening time. Use the evening of that date for a full night sky. The exact minute doesn't matter for a housewarming print.
For the caption, a nice layout is the street or house name as the title and the move-in date as the subtitle — so the print doubles as a quiet record of when your life there began. The navy night theme suits a hallway or living room; ink-on-paper is the subtler choice for a study.
To hang it: download the artwork and take it to any print shop or online poster service — the tool generates the file, it doesn't print or frame. A hallway looks good with a larger print (around 50×70 cm); smaller sizes suit a shelf or entryway. It also makes a thoughtful housewarming gift when you know the new owners' move-in date.
How the map is computed
You give it three things: a date, a time, and a place. For the place, type a town or city name and pick it from the list — 29,919 towns and cities of 18,000 people or more, from GeoNames — or enter an exact latitude and longitude instead. Accents are optional (“malmo” finds Malmö), but type the name on its own: “Roskilde Denmark” finds nothing, and a typo finds nothing rather than the wrong sky.
Your date, time and place are converted to a Julian Date and then to local sidereal time — the astronomer’s clock for “which way is the sky facing.” Each of the 1,630 stars in the Yale Bright Star Catalogue (every star brighter than magnitude 5.0, i.e. every star a good naked eye can see) is transformed to its altitude and azimuth at that exact moment, and every one of those stars above the horizon is projected onto the circular chart: zenith at the centre, horizon at the rim, north at the top — and east on the left, because a star map is read looking up, which mirrors east and west compared to a ground map.
The 89 constellation figures are drawn with the same math and clipped at the horizon. Star dots are scaled by real brightness (magnitude) and tinted by star colour. The Moon is drawn at its real altitude, azimuth and phase for your moment, and left off entirely when it was below your horizon. It does not show the planets, comets or satellites — those wander against the fixed stars and need ephemerides, which this version does not compute. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and the page works offline once loaded.
Common questions
Which date do I use — the closing, the key handover, or the first night?
The night you first slept there is the one most people mean by “our first night home”, and it makes a natural caption. The completion or key-handover date works too. Pick the day the house first felt like yours.
Does the exact street address change the map versus just the city?
Barely — a few streets over rotates the stars by a hair. But for a home print it's nice to be literal, so enter the address coordinates (long-press the pin on a phone map to read them). The value is knowing it's exactly your roof, even if the picture would look the same from the town centre.
Can I caption it with the address?
Yes — a common layout is the street or house name as the title and the date you moved in as the subtitle. It doubles as a quiet record of when your life there began.