What is a Planisphere?
Planispheres are a deceptively simple, yet essential piece of equipment, no matter how experienced an astronomer you are.
A planisphere is comprised of two discs. The rear disc shows all the stars visible from your location, while the front one has a window showing only part of the rear disc. Set the front disc to any date and time to see where the stars are at that moment.
Planispheres are brilliant for four reasons, because they:
- Squeeze a whole sky’s worth of information into a really small, easy to keep with you space
- Last forever. You can use it from the day you buy it to the day you die
- Don’t need any detailed knowledge to use them
- Don’t need a wifi signal, power or technology to run them
When you’ve got one, you’ll use a planisphere for four things:
- Identifying the constellations in the sky above your head
- Discovering which constellations are visible for any given observing time
- Finding the best time of day or year to observe a constellation you want to see
- Locating a particular planet for any given month from now until 2020
In the rest of this article, we show you how to get the very best from your star wheel.
Northern Hemisphere Planisphere
The most essential thing with buying planispheres is to get the one specific for your latitude.
Planispheres are only effective for observing within 10° of their published latitude, after that, what you’ll see overhead is too different from the chart for it to be useful.
For that reason, there are a number of different versions printed and you’ll need the one most relevant for your location.
We’ve used the Firefly (Philip’s) brand of Planisphere (link opens a new tab) on this page, but David S. Chandler is the most popular US brand.
David Chandler publish three northern hemisphere planispheres:
- 20°-30° N – Best for the southern states of the US, including down to the Florida Keys
- 30°-40° N – which covers most of the USA and southern Europe
- 40°-50° N – which is good for north America, southern Canada, Europe and the UK
By way of example for picking the right one, Maine is around 45°N so the 40°-50° N edition is the best one to choose for stargazing there. To find what latitude you live at, just type “[name of town] latitude” into Google and note the number that ends in ° N.
One minor thing to keep in mind is that plastic designs last better than card/paper. They are not affected by dew or rain and are less likely to get bent and tatty at the edges.
How Planispheres Work
A planisphere is basically two big circles of plastic riveted together at their centres.
The back circle has a complete star map printed on it, whilst the front has an oval window which only lets you see that part of the sky visible at a time you choose.
Learn how to read a star chart
The first thing you need to do with planisphere is learn how to set it.
How to Set a Planisphere for a Date and Time
To understand how to use a star chart like this, let’s pick a time and date that we’re planning to look at the night sky.
For the rest of this guide, let’s assume we plan to do some observing on the 20th of November at around 10pm.
To set this date and time, rotate the front disc so that the little blue line under 22h/10pm on the blue disc points to 20 November on the outer white circle, as shown in the picture above.
Your design may not be exactly the same as this, but will be similar, so just follow the instructions that came with it.
The chart inside the oval window is the night sky as it will appear at 10pm on 20th November in your location.
To get as much value from your planisphere as possible, we’ve picked out the important parts of the sky map and explain each of them below.
What You See on a Planisphere Star Chart
The rivet in the centre marks the location of the north celestial pole. All the stars appear to rotate around this point, and it’s where the pole star – Polaris – is located.
Constellations are written in BOLD CAPS, Orion is circled as an example in the picture. Notice that lines join stars in the constellations to make their shapes easier to identify.
The stars themselves are shown with different sizes of dot. A bigger dot means a brighter star.
Only naked-eye stars are shown, down to magnitude 5. Keep in mind that you may not be able to see the faintest stars if you live under light pollution.
Planispheres are designed to show the whole, vast night sky above your head in a really small oval. To do that effectively, they only show some objects of interest, like M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) and the double cluster, both highlighted in the picture.
The Milky Way is shown in gray spreading along the night sky.
The ecliptic is shown as a dotted line tracing a circular track across the planisphere window. This is the line which the sun traces against the sky over the course of a year. It’s also the line along which the planets appear to move.
If you’d like to learn more about the ecliptic and seeing planets, try our Beginner’s Guide to Backyard Astronomy Course.
Planets move across the sky so much faster than the static stars, so they can’t be plotted into the planisphere window. Below, we’ll show you how to locate a planet using the planisphere.
The final highlighted part of the window is the declination markers. Declination is the measure from celestial north (the rivet) at 90°, to the celestial equator at 0° and on down to the celestial south pole at -90°.
Declination is used together with right ascension (equivalent to longitude on Earth and marked in hours on the outer ring), to give coordinates for any object in the night sky.
History Repeating..?
What you might find surprising is that this exact view of the sky we’ve dialled in for 10pm on the 20th November can be seen at many different times of the year.
We set the planisphere for 10pm on the 20th November, but if you look around the rim of your own planisphere, you’ll see that it’s also set for 11pm on the 4th November, midnight on the 21st October and even 10am on the 20th May!
At some of these times and dates, the sun will be up of course and so we can’t actually see any of the stars in the planisphere’s window – but they are there nonetheless.
This demonstrates the fact that the night sky moves on about four minutes every day. So, at 10:00pm on 20th November, the sky looks exactly the same as it does at 9:56pm on the 21st November, 9:52pm on the 22nd November, and so on.
After a month, the sky ‘moves forward’ 2 hours (30 days x 4 minutes = 120 minutes = 2 hours) so 10pm on 20th November is also exactly the same as 8pm on the 20th December.
The great thing about this is that, sooner or later, the part of the northern hemisphere night sky that you want to look at will come into view at a time that works for you to see it.
How to Use the Planisphere
Now we’ve discovered what a planisphere is made of, it’s time to learn how to use one.
Planispheres sit mid-way in usefulness between a printed monthly star guide – such as this one and a star atlas.
Monthly guides are great because they are focussed enough to contain planet positions and moon phases. But, they don’t show the actually nightly variations.
At the other end of the spectrum, star atlases are a fundamental piece of kit for a backyard astronomer to plan a night’s viewing. But… they’ve got a large amount of detail in them and they are not time/location specific.
A planisphere sits nicely in between these two.
It’s specific for the time and location, shows you the whole sky but not in overwhelming detail, it doesn’t need a computer or magazine subscription to work… and they’re really cheap!
Using your Planisphere to Learn Circumpolar Constellations
Learning the constellations is a handy skill that any new astronomer should focus on.
Once you recognise the main northern hemisphere constellations, such as Cassiopeia, finding your way around the night sky becomes a lot easier and you can focus on finding the specific object you’re looking for.
Let’s return to the planisphere with the time we set earlier – 10pm on the 20th November.Remember that the rivet in the centre is the northern celestial pole (ncp), right where you’ll find polaris in the night sky.
Around the ncp are the circumpolar constellations, or the constellations that circle the pole.
If you turn your planisphere a full loop, you’ll see there are some constellations that are always in the window – they never get covered over.
On the planisphere being used for our example, the are inside the red circle is circumpolar, i.e., they never set.
If you learn to recognise the constellations within that circle, you’ll always be able to find them at night because they are never hidden from view by the horizon.
The further south you are, the fewer circumpolar constellations there are because the north celestial pole is closer to the horizon. Click here to discover your circumpolar constellations.
Using your Planisphere to Locate Other Constellations
All other constellations are visitors to our night sky for a periods of time across the night / year. The further south they are, the more fleeting the visit.
Look at Orion as an example.
Set the planisphere so that Orion is at its highest point in the sky, which is when midday is on 15th June.
We obviously can’t see it at that time, because the sun is up, but looking around the rim of the planisphere you can see that Orion is this high in the sky at 7pm on Feb 01, 10pm on Jan 15, 2am on November 16 and 5am on October 01.
With a clear sky, all of these times work for observing (even if they don’t match up with your sleep requirements!)
Now, turn the planisphere’s front wheel a half circle so that midday is aligned with 14th December and Orion is no longer visible in the window…
Looking around the rim, note that Orion is not visible at 7pm on August 30, 10pm July 15, midnight June 15, 2am May 14, 5am March 29, etc
Orion is clearly not a circumpolar constellation as there are many times of the year it is not visible to be observed.
This simple demonstration shows that Orion is known as a winter constellation because there are so many more opportunities to see it then.
Finding the Zenith
We can use the planisphere to find out exactly what we’ve got above our heads at any given moment.
Re-set your planisphere to 10pm on the 20th November.
Before going any further, there is one last feature of the planisphere which we’ll bring to your attention which you might not yet have noticed… it’s a little blue cross!
This blue cross is printed onto the front circle of your planisphere and is so hard to see that we’ve put a piece of white paper behind it in the picture above.
That cross marks your ‘overhead’ point, known as the zenith, when using the planisphere.
On the 20th November at 10pm, you can see the overhead point is almost in Cassiopeia, as shown in the picture.
Once you know what is directly overhead, it’s time to get pointed in the right direction for observing.
How to Use A Planisphere for Stargazing
Use the following steps out in the field to get the best results from your planisphere:
- Face approximately south
- Hold the planisphere in front you like a reading book
- Rotate it so that ‘south’ on the planisphere is pointing towards the southern horizon you’re facing
- Make a note of your zenith view ((overhead) and compare to the planisphere
- Now compare the southern horizon view with the planisphere
- Next, go midway between the zenith and horizon to get a sense of the planisphere scale compared to reality
- Repeat the same steps facing different horizons but, when facing east, for example, rotate the planisphere so east is facing forwards
Following these simple steps will quickly help you become comfortable with how to use your planisphere to find constellations.
If you prefer a visual demonstration, scroll to the video at the bottom of this page.
There’s a Lot of Sky in that Little Window!
Every star between the overhead point and the horizon fits into just two inches of the planisphere’s star window, and that can take some getting used to.
There’s an added challenge to matching what’s in the planisphere’s star window to what’s above your head: the design of a standard planisphere for the northern hemisphere stretches the constellations further south in the sky, making them appear more spread out on the planisphere window than they are in reality.
That’s why it’s easiest to start learning the constellations above your head and down to around midway between overhead and the horizon. They’re simpler to compare with the image in the planisphere’s window than constellations on the horizon.
Armed with a red flashlight, your planisphere, and this guide, you’ll never be lost for naming the stars and locating constellations overhead, no matter the time of day or day of the year in which you are observing.
Let’s discover what else this clever little tool can help you with…
Using a Planisphere to Find Planets
We’ve already mentioned that the planets are not printed on the planisphere. This is because they are not static against the background of stars but constantly moving across the night sky.
Thankfully, the Firefly Planisphere provides a way for you to locate venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn for any month between now and 2020.
Turn your planisphere over and on the back you will see four charts of numbers under the heading of ‘Planetary Tables’.
To demonstrate how to use these, let’s work through an example.
Assume it’s January 2017 and you want to find Mars in the night sky.
You can see from the picture, the numbers 341 for January and 3 for February 2017.
These are both measures of degrees on the outermost ring of the planisphere.
Using a straight edge, mark a (removable) line joining the 341° marker with the central rivet.
Where this line crosses the ecliptic is where Mars will be found on the 1st of January 2017.
Do the same again for 3° to find Mars on the first day of February.
Taking the two lines together, you can see the direction of travel over the course of January 2017.
Now we know where Mars will be (in Aquarius) we can use the planisphere to work out the best time to see it.
In this example, we’ll be able to see Mars in the early evening throughout January 2017, when it will be low on the western horizon.
Finding Sunset/Sunrise with your Planisphere
One last little ‘trick’ that we’re going to share with you is how to use your planisphere to learn the approximate sunrise and sunset time on any given day of the year.
This time, set the planisphere so that midday is aligned with 20th November.
Draw an imaginary line from the centre of the planisphere to the 20th November and, where it crosses the ecliptic is approximately where the sun is located on the sky on this date.
Now, move the front disc so that the ‘eastern horizon‘ is just touching the sun’s location on the ecliptic and read off the time on 20th November.
Repeat, but where the ‘western horizon‘ is just touching the sun’s location on the ecliptic.
In the picture you can read a sunrise time of just before 8am (yours may be different, depending on latitude). For sunset, the reading is just after 4pm.
Video Guide to Using a Planisphere
This video is really helpful for understanding how to get the most out of your planisphere.
Summary
A planisphere is a very simple and yet incredibly versatile and helpful tool for all stargazers.
However, new astronomers will particularly benefit from these clever little guides to the night sky.
