About The Texas A&M Planisphere

The Texas A&M Planisphere represents the current positions of the stars as viewed from the Texas A&M Astronomical Observatory by default. Read the "Usage" section for information on setting the planisphere to your geographic coordinates. On the planisphere, the meridian is represented as a faint, red line when the Equatorial Grid is showing. Simply put, Local Siderial Time (LST) is the Right Ascension currently at the meridian. The planisphere will update once every minute.

This is a new planisphere that displays all of the bright stars that are visible from an observer's location. It was added on March 28, 2005. The planisphere is an orthographic rendering based on the Yale Bright Star catalog.

 

PHYS 307 Students

As an exercise, use the SFA Star Charts to locate the stars that lie along the meridian for the current date and time. Don't forget to account for Daylight Savings Time (DST) when using the SFA Star Charts. Then, refresh this page and compare the stars/constellations you found on the SFA charts with the planisphere. If you performed the exercise correctly, both should match exactly.

 

Credits

Texas A&M Planisphere written and created by Don Carona.

Data for constellation lines provided by Dr Dan Bruton of Stephen F. Austin State University.

Data for stellar locations provided by the Yale Bright Star Catalog.