The Sky On The Day They Were Born
Every person has one date and one place that is theirs alone. We plot the stars exactly as they stood over that town on that night, and put their name underneath.
Why It Lands
What Makes This a Good Gift
Their Date, Their Town
The sky over the actual place of birth, not a generic star chart for the month or the sign.
Any Year We Can Reach
A ninetieth birthday is calculated as precisely as a first. The mathematics does not get harder with age.
Works At Any Age
A nursery print, an eighteenth, a retirement. The same object reads differently depending on how far back it goes.
Nothing Printed Early
You design it and see the preview before anything is made, so the date and spelling are yours to check.
The Thinking
A Star Map for Birthdays
The difficulty with birthday gifts is that the good ones require you to know what someone wants. A star map sidesteps that entirely: it requires only that you know when and where they were born, which for most people you already do.
It works across ages in a way almost nothing else does. A first birthday gets a print that will hang in a bedroom for eighteen years. A fortieth gets a sky the recipient has never once thought to look up. A ninetieth gets a night from a world that no longer exists — and the map is as accurate for 1935 as it is for last week.
The detail that tends to land hardest is not the astronomy. It is the place. Printing the birthplace and its coordinates underneath turns the piece from a chart into a record of where someone came from, which is often the part they have moved a long way from.
Choosing a Date
Which Night Do You Put On It?
This is the part that stalls people. Any of these work, and none of them needs to be exact to the minute.
The day they were born
The default, and the strongest. Use the birth time if you have it and the town rather than the hospital — the coordinates read better and the sky is identical.
A milestone birthday
For a fiftieth or a ninetieth, the birth date carries more weight than the birthday itself. The gap between the two is the point.
The day they became a parent
A birthday gift for a mother or father that marks the child’s arrival instead. Often more affecting than a print of their own birth.
A first birthday
Bought for the child, kept by the parents. This is the one that ends up on a bedroom wall for the whole of a childhood.
I gave this for my girlfriend’s birthday, and she was brought to tears. It was the night sky the day she was born in her hometown. She hasn’t been back in six years and she was so touched — huge win!
Questions
Before You Order
I do not know their exact birth time. Does it matter?
Not much. Use midday or the evening and the constellations will all be present and correctly placed; only the rotation of the sky shifts. Nobody looking at the finished print can tell, and the date and place underneath are what people read.
Can I use the hospital rather than the town?
You can, but the town usually reads better underneath and produces an identical sky. The difference between two points a few miles apart is far too small to change the star positions.
What should I write on it?
Something short. A name and the year works; so does a line only the two of you would understand. Our guide to birthday star maps has examples of what people actually use.
Is it suitable for a child’s room?
Yes, and it is one of the more common uses. A framed print arrives glazed with shatter-resistant acrylic rather than glass, which is the sensible choice above a bed.
Then Choose a Format
One Sky, Several Ways to Keep It
The map is the same whichever you pick. What changes is the object it becomes on the wall.
Start With a Date and a Place
Enter the night and where you were. We will show you exactly how the sky looked, before you pay anything.
Create Your Star Map