steveberardi/starplot: ✨ Star charts and maps in Python · GitHub

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Starplot is a Python library for creating star charts and maps of the sky

🗺️ Maps - including 10+ customizable projections
⭐ Zenith Charts - shows the entire sky at a specific time and place
🌅 Horizon Charts - shows the horizon at a specific time and place
🔭 Optic Simulations - shows what you'll see through an optic (e.g. telescope) at a specific time and place
🌌 Galactic Charts - shows a Mollweide projection in galactic coordinates
🪐 Planets and Deep Sky Objects (DSOs) - with support for plotting their true extent
☄️ Comets and Satellites - easy trajectory plotting
🎨 Custom Styles - for all objects and with 8+ built-in themes
📥 Export - png, svg, jpeg
🚀 Data Backend - powered by DuckDB + Ibis for fast object lookup
📓 Custom Data Catalogs - with helpers for building and optimizing
🧭 Label Collision Avoidance - ensuring all labels are readable
🌐 Localization - label translations for Chinese, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Persian, and Spanish

Examples

Zenith chart of the stars from a specific time/location:

Map around the constellation Orion:

The Pleiades star cluster, as seen through a refractor telescope from a specific time and location:

Basic Usage

To create a star chart for tonight's sky as seen from Palomar Mountain in California:

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

from starplot import ZenithPlot, Observer, styles, _

tz = ZoneInfo("America/Los_Angeles")
dt = datetime.now(tz).replace(hour=22)

observer = Observer(
    dt=dt,
    lat=33.363484,
    lon=-116.836394,
)

p = ZenithPlot(
    observer=observer,
    style=styles.PlotStyle().extend(
        styles.extensions.BLUE_MEDIUM,
    ),
    resolution=4096,
    autoscale=True,
)
p.constellations()
p.stars(where=[_.magnitude < 4.6])
p.constellation_labels()
p.horizon()
p.export("starchart.png")