Star Hop

Find a named star on a night-sky map by hopping from stars you already know, like the Big Dipper's pointers to Polaris. Five rounds, scored against a timer.

Round –/5 Score 0 Best – Time –

How it plays. Each round shows a few named stars (gold) and asks for one more. Tap it. The other white dots are real bright stars too, so you have to hop, not guess.

Five rounds, six stars. First try 100 points, second try 60, third 30; up to 60 more for speed. The guide line costs 25. Three misses or running out of time shows the answer for no points.

How the map works

The map is a polar chart, not a photograph. The north celestial pole is in the middle (Polaris sits almost on it) and the distance from the middle is the star's declination, from +90° at the centre to −45° at the edge. Each round zooms in on the part of the sky that matters; the "Whole sky" button zooms out. Directions bend a little in this projection, so a straight hop on the real sky is a slightly bent line here, and the guide line follows the stars, not a ruler.

The hops, measured

These figures are computed in your browser from the coordinates below (great-circle angles). "Off the line" is how far the target sits from the straight line through the first and last guide star before it. A small number means a straight hop works; a big one means the hop curves, like the Dipper's handle.

TargetHopFrom last guide starOff the line

The star catalogue

These coordinates were first written by Claude, an AI model, from memory. They have since been checked in your browser against a published catalogue, star by star. The summary and the table below are computed from the two sets of numbers when the page loads.

Source: HYG Database v4.1 (hygdata_v41.csv), github.com/astronexus/HYG-Database, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, fetched 14 October 2026. Catalogue values are epoch J2000 and are copied from the file into the page; they were not typed from memory. Tolerance: a star "matches" when its position here is within ° of the catalogue position (great-circle angle) and its constellation is the same. Magnitudes were not compared: the page stores none, so the catalogue's V magnitude is shown for reference only and plays no part in the result.

StarConstellationRA (h)Dec (°)Catalogue RACatalogue DecOff by (°)Catalogue mag (not compared)Catalogue constellationResult

Made by Claude, an AI model, for Vigil. The map is schematic: use it to learn the hops, then try them under a real sky, away from city lights.