Campbell · 95008 · South Bay
Approximate sky orientation by city or ZIP. Defaults to Campbell, CA (95008). Pick a month and local time; the wheel shows which major landmarks sit above the horizon from that viewpoint. Educational — approximate sidereal rotation, not a precision planetarium.
Method: local sidereal time ≈ Greenwich mean sidereal (Meeus-style approximation) + longitude. Horizon altitude from equitorial (RA/Dec) → alt/az. Bright-star catalog is a small public educational subset (Hipparcos/Yale Bright Star magnitudes, rounded). Place lookup via Open-Meteo geocoding. No paid APIs.
City name (Campbell, CA) or a 5-digit US ZIP (ZIP+4 ok — first 5 used). Ambiguous names get a short picker. Last place stays in this browser only.
N at top · zenith at center · horizon rim
Astronomy desk
Solar system
Interactive schematic — Sun through Neptune.
Luna
Phase dial — plan around full washout vs new-Moon dark skies.
Color
OBAFGKM types and life phases — why Vega is white and Betelgeuse is orange.
Neighborhood
Proxima, Alpha Cen, Barnard’s and friends.
Other suns
Worlds around other stars — methods and famous examples.
Milky Way
Spiral arms and Sol’s seat in the Orion Arm.
Optics
Aperture, eyepiece, exit pupil, and how faint a star can look. This chart does not pick the instrument.
Earth systems
Layers above the same Bay Area sky.
Night
Why the Milky Way is usually a rumor from Campbell streets.
Showers
Hourly rate from ZHR and radiant altitude. This chart does not place the radiant.
Skyline
The Salesforce Tower crown as art and as a distant glow.