Wedding Star Map — the Sky the Night You Said “I Do”
Your wedding happened under a specific sky. This tool recomputes it — every star over the venue at the moment of your vows — and puts your names beneath it.
Make your wedding 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.
Enter the wedding date, the venue's town (type its name and pick it from the list, or enter exact coordinates for a country venue), and a moment: couples usually choose the ceremony time, the first dance, or simply midnight of the wedding night. Add your names as the title and a line like “The night we said ‘I do’” as the subtitle.
The ink-on-paper theme suits wedding décor — dark stars on warm white, closer to a letterpress print than a poster — and it is the cheap one to print and frame. The navy night theme is the dramatic alternative.
It also makes a strong first-anniversary gift: the traditional first-year material is paper.
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 moment of the wedding should I use?
Any moment that means something: the processional, the vows, the first dance. The sky drifts only ~15° per hour, so anything that evening gives a similar chart — pick the moment, then let the caption say which one it was.
We married in the afternoon — does a star map still make sense?
Yes. The stars were above the horizon whether or not daylight hid them; the chart shows what was really there. Many couples use the evening of the wedding day instead, which is equally true to the date.
Can it show both our hometowns too?
Make more than one — the generator is free and unlimited. A common trio is: where you each grew up, plus where you married.