AN ATLAS OF DELAYED LIGHT
The light that left
The sky reaches us after many different delays. Choose a year and see which light was setting out for Earth then, star by star.
The 1989 ±5-year exposure contains 48 stars. The brightest is Arcturus, 36.7 light-years away.
The year is approximate: stellar distances carry uncertainty, and rounding turns a continuous journey into a calendar year.
The sky from your chosen year
The lit points are stars whose light left for us inside the chosen window. Tap any star for details.
Find a star
Stars in the exposure
How to read the map
The map contains stars in HYG 4.1 with apparent magnitude no greater than 6.5 and a usable distance. Parsecs are converted to light-years with a factor of 3.26156. The departure year is 2026 minus the distance in light-years, rounded to the nearest year.
Star source: HYG 4.1, assembled by David Nash from the Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star and Gliese catalogues. The catalogue is released under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Positions use a Hammer projection of the entire sky. A point gives the direction of a star. Its size loosely follows apparent magnitude, an inverse scale on which smaller numbers correspond to brighter stars.