BORTLE CERO EL PUENTE ESTELAR

TIME TRAVEL THROUGH STARLIGHT

Some light
never left.

Choose a day you still carry.
Find its echo among the stars.

01 / YOUR MOMENT

A meeting, a goodbye, a day that stays with you.

Connecting to the star catalog…

STELLAR CARTOGRAPHYDRAG TO EXPLORE

A silhouette under the stars on the trip to photograph the GeminidsGEMINIDS · ONE PHOTOGRAPH, ONE BRIDGE

WHERE THIS BEGAN

Light from a time
we were still together.

For my Mom, my Dad, and Momo.

This began with a photograph and an idea that is a little nerdy, and a great comfort to me. On a trip to photograph the Geminids, I framed Sirius and a few thousand other stars.

Light from Sirius takes about 8.6 years to reach us. When I made that picture, I thought about the year that light had left the star: a time when I still had my Mom, my Dad, and Momo with me.

“Looking at that light feels like traveling back to a day when we were still together.”

When I look at Sirius, I imagine that out there, that time is still happening. It is how I remember: finding a place in the sky for the people who are still part of me.

This bridge comes from that feeling. A date, a star, and whatever meaning you give it.

— Miguel · Bortle Cero

Thanks to Cyn Cabrera for helping me make these images.

Read the original post ↗

This story describes a personal, symbolic connection. The light we receive shows the star's past; it does not carry an image of the people we love. The 2017 reference in the post belongs to the date of that photograph.

DISTANCE, TIME AND MEMORY

Far away
is long ago.

Light takes time to travel. What we receive today from a star 20 light years away left it about 20 years ago.

✧STAR·········· →YEARS IN TRANSIT⊕EARTH

We look for stars whose distance in light years is close to the time elapsed since your date. We always show the difference: distances carry uncertainty and are not exact day-for-day matches.

We see the star's past. Imagining our own past from out there is a metaphor: light from Earth travels too, but receiving it would not mean being able to make out people. A round trip would take roughly twice as long.

The 3D flight is an artistic pass through the catalog. “Find it in my sky” calculates its position from Earth separately, for one place and one time.

Color follows the catalog's B−V index or, where that is missing, an estimate from spectral type. Apparent size and halo express brightness and camera distance; they do not represent the star's physical radius.

FROM YOUR CORNER OF THE WORLD

Find this light.

A PLACE TO REMEMBER

Give a Star Letter.

160 characters max · 0/160. It adapts to all three formats.

Your note and your date stay in this browser. Download the letter to share it wherever you like.

Your memory, written in light.

MADE FOR LOOKING UP

A shared sky.

Concept, photography and direction: Miguel · Bortle Cero. Photograph made with the help of Cyn Cabrera.

Visual inspiration: Celestial Cartography, by Bryan Curran · visit his experience ↗. This site uses its own implementation; it includes no code or assets from that repository, which declared no license when we reviewed it.

Music: “ana” · mobygratis ↗. License agreement ↗.

Stars: HYG 4.1, David Nash / Astronexus and contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. J2000 coordinates, approximate distances and a selection of valid records. Our derived catalog keeps the same license.

Download the search catalog · Download the sky positions · Provenance and transformations

Rendering: Three.js (MIT). Calculations: Astronomy Engine, Don Cross (MIT). Typeface: Space Grotesk (SIL OFL 1.1).

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