The winter is here. Where I live, the Sun in December will stay up for less than 8 hours. 2/3 of a “day” is actually night. Perfect conditions to watch the stars, aren’t they? All you need is clear skies and knowing the skies. In my case - “sometimes” for the fist, “nope” for the latter.

The “nope” I find truly disappointing.

Oddly enough, I’m fan or astrophysics, a geek! Just so far I invested more into theoretical aspect of it. The regular stuff - finding a distance to a star by how bright and what colour it is. Or checking on how close a moon can get to its planet before torn apart.

I decided this needs to be fixed. I mean - knowing the sky map. Weather engineering will keep for later.

How do I do this? There is plenty of superb apps that let you point a phone at sky and tell what you see. Take Sky Map for instant. I’ve been using it around the world. I still remember my brain boiling to the Northern Star just above the horizon. Where I live it’s properly high in the sky!

Just this is not what I’m after this time. I want to build a mental 3D map of the Sun, the solar system nearby stars in our galaxy, then other galaxies. Add a new element, go to my backyard, find it in the sky. As the Earth goes around the Sun, I want to see how my new friends move away to make some room for the stars of summer.

What’s the big deal? Find a good database, plot with Matplotlib or similar and Bob’s your uncle. So this is exactly what I tried. And so I found SPICE from JPL and NASA.

Oh. My. God.

Sometimes you find more than you wished for…