How it’s made

Every Solar Chart piece is drawn from scratch for your date, time and place. Nothing is a stock image or a reused template. This is what goes into one.

The sky, calculated

Sun, Moon and planets. Their positions are computed for your exact moment with Astronomy Engine, an open-source astronomy library. Your birth time is read in the local time zone of the place you choose, daylight saving included.
Stars. The star map uses the Yale Bright Star Catalogue: about 1,300 of the brightest stars (down to magnitude 4.8, what you would see on a clear suburban night), with the traditional constellation figures. The sky is drawn as it stood above your location, adjusted for the slow drift of the stars (precession) since the catalogue’s epoch.
Birth chart. Signs, aspects, your rising sign (Ascendant) and Midheaven come from the same positions. Houses use the whole-sign system unless you choose another.
Unknown birth time. If you don’t know it, we compute the solar system, birth chart and Moon for noon and the star map and horizon for 9 pm, and we leave the time off the print rather than state one you never gave.

The images

The Moon is a real photograph: NASA’s Galileo spacecraft mosaic of the full Moon, shaded to its true phase and turned to how it appeared from your location.
The planets in the photoreal style are built from planet maps based on NASA spacecraft imagery.
Everything else, from orbits and wheels to lettering, is drawn as crisp vector artwork and rendered for the size you order, so it prints sharply at any size.

Printing and materials

Posters: 189 g/m² museum-quality matte paper, smooth and non-glossy.
Framed prints: the same paper in a slim solid-wood frame (black, white or red oak) with a shatter-resistant acrylic front and hanging hardware. Some sizes are available with a mat.
Canvas: poly-cotton canvas, hand-stretched over a solid-wood frame, with fade-resistant colour.
T-shirts: soft, pre-shrunk cotton.
Digital downloads: a high-resolution PNG (4000 px), ready to print yourself or use on screen.

Made to order

Each piece is printed on demand by our print partner, Printful, after you order. Production usually takes a few business days, then it ships with tracking. Shipping is free to the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France and Australia. See our Refund & Returns Policy for what we do if anything arrives damaged.

Credits

Planet textures: Solar System Scope, licensed under CC BY 4.0 (resized and shaded for print).
Moon: NASA/JPL, Galileo full-Moon mosaic PIA00405 (public domain).
Star positions and constellation lines: d3-celestial data © Olaf Frohn (BSD-3-Clause), derived from the public-domain Yale Bright Star Catalogue.
Astronomical calculations: Astronomy Engine by Don Cross (MIT License).