/ An experiment, revisited

Update: Celestial Sphere

One sky. Eighty-eight constellations. A little more room to explore.

The original Celestial Sphere! connected seven constellations against a rotating field of 10,000 stars. This update completes the collection and puts the sky in your hands: turn it, find a familiar shape, or wander somewhere new.

THE CELESTIAL SPHERE88 / 88
An interactive star map. Explore the complete constellation directory below.

Loading the sky…

Selected constellationEquatorial view · J2000

Drag to turn · select a name to bring it into view · use arrow keys on the sphere to explore.

ORI / SELECTED

Orion

Hunter

Constellation reference ↗

Find your constellation

88 constellations

From seven to the whole sky

The original experiment was about turning a catalog into something you could see. This version is about finding your way around it. Every constellation now has a connected figure, a searchable name, and a view that turns toward it. Try the compact Southern Cross (Crux), the long sweep of Hydra, or the two separated parts of Serpens.

A sphere of directions

Imagine every star placed on the inside of an enormous globe around Earth. Its position on that globe tells us where to look, not how far away it is. Here, that globe is shown from the outside, with the far half hidden so the patterns stay readable. This is an atlas of the whole sky, rather than a live view from a particular place or time.

The IAU’s 88 constellations divide the entire sky into regions. The lines here are a drawing aid; they are not the official region boundaries. Serpens counts as one constellation even though its head and tail sit on opposite sides of Ophiuchus.

Under the stars

The background reuses the original Hipparcos star catalog. The constellation figures and names are adapted from Olaf Frohn’s d3-celestial, with BSD license attribution. Everything is drawn in the browser, and the star and constellation data are served with this site.