Your Birthday Star

If you want to keep it

Your birthday star, ringed on your own sky

Every custom star map of your birth night can carry the star you just found. We ring it in gold where it stood over your birthplace, name it, and add a line under the date: Birthday star: Pollux · 34 light-years. If it was below the horizon that night, the line still goes on, because the light was on its way either way. Ordered as a framed birth-night star map, it arrives ready to hang.

• · The real sky for the date, time and place, from the Hipparcos catalogue
• · Your words on it, set in the typeface you choose
• · Framed from $79.99, prints from $39.99, digital $19.99
• · Or just the certificate: one printable page with your star and your sky, $7.99
• · Free Shipping on every print

Design mine · framed from $79.99or the digital file, $19.99or find your star first

New · Star Map Necklace

Or wear your birth sky

The same night, laser engraved on a 20 mm coin pendant in steel, 18k gold plated or rose gold plated. Gift boxed with your message, from $79, free shipping.

Design your necklace

More ways in: a custom star map of any date, a framed star map ready to hang, a birth poster with a baby's name and stats, a custom star poster to frame yourself, the digital star map download, the star map necklace, the birthday star map page, the birthday star map guide, the night a child was born and all star map gifts. 427 customers have rated the result 4.9/5.

Questions

Birthday star questions

What is a birthday star?

A birthday star is a star whose distance in light-years matches your age. Light takes one year to cross one light-year, so the light reaching Earth tonight from a star 30 light-years away left it 30 years ago. If you are 30, that light set out the year you were born. Nothing about it is astrological: it is a distance, a date, and a real star you can find.

How do I find my birthday star?

Type your birth date into the finder above. It works out your age in years, finds the named star whose distance in light-years matches it, and shows the sky over your birthplace that night. No account, no email, free.

Does my birthday star change every year?

Yes. Every birthday adds a light-year, so the star you match moves outward with you. Most people have a new birthday star every year or two; children move quickly through the nearest stars (Sirius at 8.6 light-years, Procyon at 11.4), and adults pass through the rich band of named stars between 30 and 100 light-years.

Is this the same as "which star was born on my birthday"?

No star is born on a particular day; stars form over millions of years. The phrase almost always means one of two things: the light-year match this page answers, or the birth-night sky, meaning which stars and constellations stood over your birthplace. The tool gives you both.

How accurate are the distances?

Distances come from the Hipparcos catalogue, the same one the star charts on this site are generated from. Parallax measurements are precise for nearby stars and rougher past about 100 light-years, so we round and say "about". The matching uses a band of ±1.5 years first and widens only when no named star sits that close.

Can I see the actual sky from the night I was born?

Yes, free, on this page. Add your birthplace and the tool draws every naked-eye star, the constellations, the planets and the Moon phase over that city on the evening of your birth. If you want to keep it, the same sky becomes a digital chart or a print with your name and a message.

Can I keep my birthday star?

Yes. The Birthday Star Certificate ($7.99) is one printable page with your birth sky, your birthday star with its Hipparcos catalogue number and distance, the place, its coordinates and the Moon that night, sent as a PDF by email. The same sky is also a digital print ($19.99), a framed print (from $79.99, free shipping) or an engraved necklace.

Why is my "star sign" constellation not in my birth sky?

Your zodiac sign marks where the Sun sat among the stars on your birthday, so that constellation rose and set with the Sun and was hidden in daylight. The constellations you could actually see that night are roughly the opposite ones. The birth-sky preview shows what was really up.